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性命雙修.成就佛心

修性即修心性,修命是續長生 (物格.知至.意誠.心正.身修.家齊.國治.天下平)


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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

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1Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 周四 1月 19, 2012 1:26 pm

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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol1

The Book of the Secrets: A New Commentary
Talks given from 01/10/72 pm to 01/03/73 pm

English Discourse series
40 Chapters

Year published:

The original series of 80 discourses were simply called "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra". For publication as books they were divided up into 5 volumes, called the "The Book of the Secrets Volume 1 - 5" (16 discourses each).
The books were later published as "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volumes 1 and 2",(40 discourses each). The two volumes also came with a deck of 112 cards to represent the various meditations.

2Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #1 周四 1月 19, 2012 1:38 pm

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Chapter title: The World of Tantra
1 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210015
ShortTitle: VBT101
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 103 mins

SUTRA:
DEVI ASKS:
OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?
WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE?
WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED?
WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL?
WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS?
HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND DESCRIPTIONS?
LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED!

Some introductory points. First, the world of VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA is not intellectual, it is not philosophical. Doctrine is meaningless to it. It is concerned with method, with technique -- not with principles at all. The word `tantra' means technique, the method, the path. So it is not philosophical -- note this. It is not concerned with intellectual problems and inquiries. It is not concerned with the "why" of things, it is concerned with "how"; not with what is truth, but how the truth can be attained.

TANTRA means technique. So this treatise is a scientific one. Science is not concerned with why, science is concerned with how. That is the basic difference between philosophy and science. Philosophy asks, "Why this existence?" Science asks, "How this existence?" The moment you ask the question, how?, method, technique, become important. Theories become meaningless; experience becomes the center.

Tantra is science, tantra is not philosophy. To understand philosophy is easy because only your intellect is required. If you can understand language, if you can understand concept, you can understand philosophy. You need not change; you require no transformation. As you are, you can understand philosophy -- but not tantra.

You will need a change... rather, a mutation. Unless YOU are different tantra cannot be understood, because tantra is not an intellectual proposition, it is an experience. Unless you are receptive, ready, vulnerable to the experience, it is not going to come to you.

Philosophy is concerned with the mind. Your head is enough; your totality is not required. Tantra needs you in your totality. It is a deeper challenge. You will have to be in it wholly. It is not fragmentary. A different approach, a different attitude, a different mind to receive it is required. Because of this, Devi is asking apparently philosophical questions. Tantra starts with

Devi's questions. All the questions can be tackled philosophically.
Really, any question can be tackled in two ways: philosophically or totally, intellectually or existentially. For example, if someone asks, "What is love?" you can tackle it intellectually, you can discuss, you can propose theories, you can argue for a particular hypothesis. You can create a system, a doctrine -- and you may not have known love at all.

To create a doctrine, experience is not needed. Really, on the contrary, the less you know the better because then you can propose a system unhesitatingly. Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are. And those who are really wise, they become ignorant. They become as simple as children, or as simple as idiots.

The less you know, the better. To be philosophical, to be dogmatic, to be doctrinaire -- this is easy. To tackle a problem intellectually is very easy. But to tackle a problem existentially -- not just to think about it, but to live it through, to go through it, to allow yourself to be transformed through it -- is difficult. That is, to know love one will have to be in love. That is dangerous because you will not remain the same. The experience is going to change you. The moment you enter love, you enter a different person. And when you come out you will not be able to recognize your old face; it will not belong to you. A discontinuity will have happened. Now there is a gap, the old man is dead and the new man has come. That is what is known as rebirth -- being twice-born.

Tantra is non-philosophical and existential. So of course Devi asks questions which appear to be philosophical, but Shiva is not going to answer them that way. So it is better to understand it in the beginning; otherwise you will be puzzled, because Shiva is not going to answer a single question. All the questions that Devi is asking, Shiva is not going to answer at all. And still he answers! And really, only he has answered them and no one else -- but on a different plane.
Devi asks, "What is your reality, my lord?" He is not going to answer it. On the contrary, he will give a technique. And if Devi goes through this technique, she will know. So the answer is round-about; it is not direct. He is not going to answer "Who am I." He will give a technique -- do it and you will know.

For tantra, doing is knowing, and there is no other knowing. Unless you do something, unless you change, unless you have a different perspective to look at, to look with, unless you move in an altogether different dimension than the intellect, there is no answer. Answers can be given -- they are all lies. All philosophies are lies. You ask a question and the philosophy gives you an answer. It satisfies you or doesn't satisfy you. If it satisfies you, you become a convert to the philosophy, but you remain the same. If it doesn't satisfy you, you go on searching for some other philosophy to be converted to. But you remain the same; you are not touched at all, you are not changed.

So whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jain, it makes no difference. The real person behind the facade of a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian is the same. Only words differ, or clothes. The man who is going to the church or to the temple or to the mosque is the same man. Only faces differ, and they are faces which are false; they are masks. Behind the masks you will find the same man -- the same anger, the same aggression, the same violence, the same greed, the same lust -- everything the same. Is Mohammedan sexuality different from Hindu sexuality? Is Christian violence different from Hindu violence? It is the same! The reality remains the same; only clothes differ.

Tantra is not concerned with your clothes, tantra is concerned with you. If you ask a question it shows where you are. It shows also that wherever you are you cannot see; that is why there is the question. A blind man asks, "What is light?" and philosophy will start answering what is light. Tantra will know only this: if a man is asking "What is light?" it shows only that he is blind. Tantra will start operating on the man, changing the man, so that he can see. Tantra will not say what is light. Tantra will tell how to attain insight, how to attain seeing, how to attain vision. When the vision is there, the answer will be there. Tantra will not give you the answer; tantra will give you the technique to attain the answer.

Now, this answer is not going to be intellectual. If you say something about light to a blind man, this is intellectual. If the blind man himself becomes capable of seeing, this is existential. This is what I mean when I say that tantra is existential. So Shiva is not going to answer Devi's questions, still, he will answer -- the first thing.

The second thing: this is a different type of language. You must know something about it before we enter into it. All the tantra treatises are dialogues between Shiva and Devi. Devi questions and Shiva answers. All the tantra treatises start that way. Why?
Why this method? It is very significant. It is not a dialogue between a teacher and a disciple, it is a dialogue between two lovers. And tantra signifies through it a very meaningful thing: that the deeper teachings cannot be given unless there is love between the two -- the disciple and the master. The disciple and master must become deep lovers. Only then can the higher, the beyond, be expressed.

So it is a language of love; the disciple must be in an attitude of love. But not only this, because friends can be lovers. Tantra says a disciple moves as receptivity, so the disciple must be in a feminine receptivity; only then is something possible. You need not be a woman to be a disciple, but you need to be in a feminine attitude of receptivity. When Devi asks, it means the feminine attitude asks. Why this emphasis on the feminine attitude?

Man and woman are not only physically different, they are psychologically different. Sex is not only a difference in the body; it is a difference in psychologies also. A feminine mind means receptivity -- total receptivity, surrender, love. A disciple needs a feminine psychology; otherwise he will not be able to learn. You can ask, but if you are not open then you cannot be answered. You can ask a question and still remain closed. Then the answer cannot penetrate you. Your doors are closed; you are dead. You are not open.

A feminine receptivity means a womb-like receptivity in the inner depth, so that you can receive. And not only that -- much more is implied. A woman is not only receiving something, the moment she receives it, it becomes a part of her body. A child is received. A woman conceives; the moment there is conception, the child has become part of the feminine body. It is not alien, it is not foreign. It has been absorbed. Now the child will live not as something added to the mother, but just as a part, just as the mother. And the child is not only received: the feminine body becomes creative; the child begins to grow.

A disciple needs a womb-like receptivity. Whatsoever is received is not to be gathered as dead knowledge. It must grow in you; it must become blood and bones in you. It must become a part, now. It must grow! This growth will change you, will transform you -- the receiver. That is why tantra uses this device. Every treatise starts with Devi asking a question and Shiva replying to it. Devi is Shiva's consort, his feminine part.

One thing more.... Now modern psychology, depth psychology particularly, says that man is both man and woman. No one is just male and no one is just female; everyone is bi-sexual. Both sexes are there. This is a very recent research in the West, but for tantra this has been one of the most basic concepts for thousands of years. You must have seen some pictures of Shiva as ARDHANARISHWAR -- half man, half woman. There is no other concept like it in the whole history of man. Shiva is depicted as half man, half woman.

So Devi is not just a consort, she is Shiva's other half. And unless a disciple becomes the other half of the master it is impossible to convey the higher teachings, the esoteric methods. When you become one then there is no doubt. When you are one with the master -- so totally one, so deeply one -- there is no argument, no logic, no reason. One simply absorbs; one becomes a womb. And then the teaching begins to grow in you and change you.

That is why tantra is written in love language. Something must also be understood about love language. There are two types of language: logical language and love language. There are basic differences between the two.

Logical language is aggressive, argumentative, violent. If I use logical language I become aggressive upon your mind. I try to convince you, to convert you, to make a puppet of you. My argument is "right" and you are "wrong." Logical language is egocentric: "I am right and you are wrong, so I must prove that I am right and you are wrong." I am not concerned with you, I am concerned with my ego. My ego is always "right."

Love language is totally different. I am not concerned with my ego; I am concerned with you. I am not concerned to prove something, to strengthen my ego. I am concerned to help you. It is a compassion to help you to grow, to help you to transform, to help you to be reborn.

Secondly, logic will always be intellectual. Concepts and principles will be significant, arguments will be significant. With love language what is said is not so significant; rather, it is the way it is said. The container, the word is not important; the content, the message is more important. It is a heart-to-heart talk, not a mind-to-mind discussion. It is not a debate, it is a communion.

So this is rare: Devi is sitting in the lap of Shiva and asking, and Shiva answers. It is a love dialogue -- no conflict, as if Shiva is speaking to himself. Why this emphasis on love -- love language? Because if you are in love with your master, then the whole gestalt changes; it becomes different. Then you are not hearing his words. Then you are drinking him. Then words are irrelevant. Really, the silence between the words becomes more significant. What he is saying may be meaningful or it may not be meaningful... but it is his eyes, his gestures, his compassion, his love.

That is why tantra has a fixed device, a structure. Every treatise starts with Devi asking and Shiva answering. No argument is going to be there, no wastage of words. There are very simple statements of fact, telegraphic messages with no view to convince, but just to relate.

If you encounter Shiva with a question with a closed mind, he will not answer you in this way. First your closedness has to be broken. Then he will have to be aggressive. Then your prejudices, then your preconceptions have to be destroyed. Unless you are cleared completely of your past, nothing can be given to you. But this is not so with his consort Devi; with Devi there is no past.

Remember, when you are deeply in love your mind ceases to be. There is no past; only the present moment becomes everything. When you are in love the present is the only time, the now is all -- no past, no future. So Devi is just open. There is no defense -- nothing to be cleared, nothing to be destroyed. The ground is ready, only a seed has to be dropped. The ground is not only ready, but welcoming, receptive, asking to be impregnated.

So all these sayings that we are going to discuss will be telegraphic. They are just sutras, but each sutra, each telegraphic message given by Shiva is worth a Veda, worth a Bible, worth a Koran. Each single sentence can become the base of a great scripture. Scriptures are logical -- you have to propose, defend, argue. Here there is no argument, just simple statements of love.

Thirdly, the very words VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA mean the technique of going beyond consciousness. VIGYANA means consciousness, BHAIRAVA means the state which is beyond consciousness, and TANTRA means the method: the method of going beyond consciousness. This is the supreme doctrine -- without any doctrine.

We are unconscious, so all the religious teachings are concerned with how to go beyond unconsciousness, how to be conscious. For example, Krishnamurti, Zen, they are all concerned with how to create more consciousness, because we are unconscious. So how to be more aware, alert? From unconsciousness, how to move toward consciousness?

But tantra says that this is a duality -- unconscious and conscious. If you move from unconsciousness to consciousness, you are moving from one duality to another. Move beyond both! Unless you move beyond both you can never reach the ultimate, so be neither the unconscious nor the conscious; just go beyond, just be. Be neither the conscious nor the unconscious -- just BE! This is going beyond yoga, going beyond Zen, going beyond all teachings.

'Vigyana' means consciousness, and 'bhairava' is a specific term, a tantra term for one who has gone beyond. That is why Shiva is known as Bhairava and Devi is known as Bhairavi -- those who have gone beyond the dualities.

In our experience only love can give a glimpse. That is why love becomes the very basic device to impart tantric wisdom. In our experience we can say that only love is something which goes beyond duality. When two persons are in love, the deeper they move into it, the less and less they are two, the more and more they become one. And a point comes and a peak is reached when only apparently they are two. Inwardly they are one; the duality is transcended.

Only in this sense does Jesus' saying that "God is love" become meaningful; otherwise not. In our experience love is nearest to God. It is not that God is loving, as Christians go on interpreting -- that God has a fatherly love for you. Nonsense! "God is love" is a tantric statement. It means love is the only reality in our experience which reaches nearest to God, to the divine. Why? Because in love oneness is felt. Bodies remain two, but something beyond the bodies merges and becomes one.

That is why there is so much hankering after sex. The real hankering is after oneness, but that oneness is not sexual. In sex two bodies have only a deceptive feeling of becoming one, but they are not one, they are only joined together. But for a single moment two bodies forget themselves in each other, and a certain physical oneness is felt. This hankering is not bad, but to stop at it is dangerous. This hankering shows a deeper urge to feel oneness.

In love, on a higher plane, the inner one moves, merges into the other, and there is a feeling of oneness. Duality dissolves. Only in this non-dual love can we have a glimpse of what is the state of a Bhairava. We may say that the state of a Bhairava is absolute love with no coming back, from the peak of love there is no falling back. It is remaining on the peak.

We have made Shiva's abode on Kailash. That is simply symbolic: it is the highest peak, the holiest peak. We have made it Shiva's abode. We can go there but we will have to come down, it cannot be our abode. We can go on a pilgrimage. It is a TEERTHYATRA -- a pilgrimage, a journey. We can touch for a single moment the highest peak; then we will have to come back.
In love this holy pilgrimage happens, but not for all because almost no one moves beyond sex. So we go on living in the valley, the dark valley. Sometimes someone moves to the peak of love, but then he falls back because it is so dizzying. It is so high and you are so low,. and it is so difficult to live there. Those who have loved, they know how difficult it is to be constantly in love. One has to come back again and again. It is Shiva's abode. He lives there; it is his home.

A Bhairava lives in love; that is his abode. When I say that is his abode, I mean now he is not even aware of love -- because if you live on Kailash you will not be aware that this is Kailash, this is a peak. The peak becomes a plain. Shiva is not aware of love. We are aware of love because we live in non-love. And because of the contrast we feel love. Shiva IS love. The state of Bhairava means that one has become love, not loving; one has become LOVE, one lives on the peak. The peak has become his abode.
How to make this highest peak possible: beyond duality, beyond unconsciousness, beyond consciousness, beyond the body and beyond the soul, beyond the world and beyond the so-called MOKSHA -- liberation? How to reach this peak? The technique is tantra. But tantra is pure technique, so it is going to be difficult to understand. First let us understand the questions, what Devi is asking.

OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Why this question? You can also ask this question, but it will not carry the same meaning. So try to understand why Devi asks, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Devi is in deep love. When you are in deep love, for the first time you encounter the inner reality. Then Shiva is not the form, then Shiva is not the body. When you are in love, the body of the beloved falls away, disappears. The form is no more and the formless is revealed. You are facing an abyss. That is why we are so afraid of love. We can face a body, we can face a face, we can face a form, but we are afraid of facing an abyss.

If you love someone, if you really love, his body is bound to disappear. In some moments of climax, of peak, the form will dissolve, and through the beloved you will enter the formless. That is why we are afraid -- it is falling into a bottomless abyss. So this question is not just a simple curiosity: OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?

Devi must have fallen in love with the form. Things start that way. She must have loved this man as a man, and now when the love has come of age, when the love has flowered, this man has disappeared. He has become formless. Now he is to be found nowhere. OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? It is a question asked in a very intense love moment. And when questions are raised, they become different according to the mind in which they are asked.

So create the situation, the milieu of the question in your mind. Devi must be at a loss -- Shiva has disappeared. When love reaches its peak the lover disappears. Why does this happen? This happens because really, everyone is formless. You are not a body. You move as a body, you live as a body, but you are not a body. When we see someone from the outside, he is a body. Love penetrates within. Then we are not seeing the person from the outside. Love can see a person as the person can see himself from within. Then the form disappears.

A Zen monk, Rinzai, attained his enlightenment, and the first thing he asked was, "Where is my body? Where has my body gone?" And he began to search. He called his disciples and said, "Go and find out where my body is. I have lost my body."

He had entered the formless. You are also a formless existence, but you know yourself not directly, but from others' eyes. You know through the mirror. Sometime, while looking in the mirror, close your eyes and then think, meditate: if there was no mirror, how could you have known your face? If there was no mirror, there would have been no face. You do not have a face; mirrors give you faces. Think of a world where there are no mirrors. You are alone -- no mirror at all, not even others' eyes working as mirrors. You are alone on a lonely island; nothing can mirror you. Then will you have any face? Or will you have any body? You cannot have one. You do not have one at all. We know ourselves only through others, and the others can only know the outer form. That is why we become identified with it.

Another Zen mystic, Hui-Hai used to say to his disciples, "When you have lost your head meditating, come immediately to me. When you lose your head, come immediately to me. When you begin to feel there is no head, do not be afraid; come immediately to me. This is the right moment. Now something can be taught to you." With a head, no teaching is possible. The head always comes in between.

Devi asks Shiva, OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? -- who are you? The form has disappeared; hence the question. In love you enter the other as himself. It is not you answering. You become one, and for the first time you know an abyss -- a formless presence.
That is why for centuries together, centuries and centuries, we were not making any sculptures, any pictures of Shiva. We were only making SHIVALINGA -- the symbol. The Shivalinga is just a formless form. When you love someone, when you enter someone, he becomes just a luminous presence. The Shivalinga is just a luminous presence, just an aura of light.
That is why Devi asks, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?

WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? We know the universe, but we never know it as wonder-filled. Children know, lovers know. Sometimes poets and madmen know. We do not know that the world is wonder-filled. Everything is just repetitive -- no wonder, no poetry, just flat prose. It doesn't create a song in you; it doesn't create a dance in you; it doesn't give birth to the poetry inside. The whole universe looks mechanical. Children look at it with wonder-filled eyes. When the eyes are wonder-filled, the universe is wonder-filled.

When you are in love, you again become like children. Jesus says, "Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God." Why? Because if the universe is not a wonder, you cannot be religious. The universe can be explained -- then your approach is scientific. The universe is either known or unknown, but that which is unknown can be known any day; it is not unknowable. The universe becomes unknowable, a mystery, only when your eyes are wonder-filled.

Devi says, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? Suddenly there is the jump from a personal question to a very impersonal one. She was asking, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? and then suddenly, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE?

When form disappears, your beloved becomes the universe, the formless, the infinite. Suddenly Devi becomes aware that she is not asking a question about Shiva; she is asking a question about the whole universe. Now Shiva has become the whole universe. Now all the stars are moving in him, and the whole firmament and the whole space is surrounded by him. Now he is the great engulfing factor -- "the great encompassing." Karl Jaspers has defined God as "the great encompassing."

When you enter into love, into a deep, intimate world of love, the person disappears, the form disappears, and the lover becomes just a door to the universe. Your curiosity can be a scientific one -- then you have to approach through logic. Then you must not think of the formless. Then beware of the formless; then remain content with the form. Science is always concerned with the form. If anything formless is proposed to a scientific mind, he will cut it into form -- unless it takes a form it is meaningless. First give it a form, a definite form; only then does the inquiry start.

In love, if there is form then there is no end to it. Dissolve the form! When things become formless, dizzy, without boundaries, every thing entering another, the whole universe becoming a oneness, then only is it a wonder-filled universe.

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? Then Devi goes on. From the universe she goes on to ask, WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? This formless, wonder-filled universe, from where does it come? From where does it originate? Or does it NOT originate? What is the seed?

WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL? asks Devi. This wheel goes on moving and moving -- this great change, this constant flux. But who centers this wheel? Where is the axis, the center, the unmoving center?

She doesn't stop for any answer. She goes on asking as if she is not asking anyone, as if talking to herself.

WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS?
HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND DESCRIPTION?

LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. The emphasis is not on questions but on doubts: LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! This is very significant. If you are asking an intellectual question, you are asking for a definite answer so that your problem is solved. But Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. She is not really asking about answers. She is asking for a transformation of her mind, because a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind whatsoever answers are given. Note it: a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind. Answers are irrelevant. If I give you one answer and you have a doubting mind, you will doubt it. If I give you another answer, you will doubt that also. You have a doubting mind. A doubting mind means you will put a question mark to anything.

So answers are useless. You ask me, "Who created the world?" and I tell you "A" created the world. Then you are bound to ask, "Who created 'A'?" So the real problem is not how to answer questions. The real problem is how to change the doubting mind, how to create a mind which is not doubting -- or, which is trustful. So Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED.

Two or three things more.... When you ask a question, you may be asking for many reasons. One may be just this, that you want a confirmation. You already know the answer, you have the answer, you just want it to be confirmed that your answer is right. Then your question is false, pseudo; it is not a question. You may be asking a question not because you are ready to change yourself, but just as a curiosity.

The mind goes on questioning. In the mind questions come as leaves come on a tree. That is the very nature of the mind -- to question. So it goes on questioning. It matters not what you are questioning, with anything given to the mind it will create a question. It is a machine to grind out, to create questions. So give it anything and it will cut it into pieces and create many questions. One question answered, and the mind will create many questions from the answer. This has been the whole history of philosophy.

Bertrand Russell remembers that when he was a child he thought that one day, when he will be mature enough to understand all philosophy, all questions will be answered. Then later, when he was eighty, he said, "Now I can say that my own questions are there standing, as they were standing when I was a child. No other questions have come up because of these theories of philosophy." So he said, "When I was young I used to say, philosophy is an inquiry for ultimate answers. Now I cannot say it. It is an inquiry for endless questions."

So one question creates one answer and many questions. The doubting mind is the problem. Devi says, "Do not be concerned with my questions. I have asked so many things: What is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is life beyond form? How can we enter it fully above time and space? But do not be concerned with my questions. Let my doubts be cleared. I ask these questions because they are in my mind. I ask them just to show you my mind, but do not pay much attention to them. Really, answers will not fulfill my need. My need is... let my doubts be cleared."

But how can the doubts be cleared? Will any answer do? Is there any answer which will clear your doubts? Mind IS the doubt. It is not that the mind doubts, mind is the doubt! Unless the mind dissolves, doubts cannot be cleared.

Shiva will answer. His answers are techniques -- the oldest, most ancient techniques. But you can call them the latest also because nothing can be added to them. They are complete -- one hundred and twelve techniques. They have taken in all the possibilities, all the ways of cleaning the mind, transcending the mind. Not a single method could be added to Shiva's one hundred and twelve methods. And this book, VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, is five thousand years old. Nothing can be added; there is no possibility to add anything. It is exhaustive, complete. It is the most ancient and yet the latest, yet the newest. Old like old hills -- the methods seem eternal -- and they are new like a dewdrop before the sun, because they are so fresh.

These one hundred and twelve methods of meditation constitute the whole science of transforming mind. We will enter them one by one. We will try to comprehend first intellectually. But use your intellect only as an instrument, not as a master. Use it as an instrument to understand something, but do not go on creating barriers with it. When we will be talking about these techniques, just put aside your past knowledge, your knowing, whatsoever information you have collected. Put them aside -- they are just dust gathered on the road.

Encounter these methods with a fresh mind -- with alertness, of course, but not with argumentation. And do not create the fallacy that an argumentative mind is an alert mind. It is not, because the moment you move into arguments you have lost the awareness, you have lost the alertness. Then you are not here.

These methods do not belong to any religion. Remember, they are not Hindu, just as the theory of relativity is not Jewish because Einstein conceived it. And radio and television are not Christian. No one says, "Why are you using electricity? This is Christian, because a Christian mind conceived it." Science does not belong to races and religions -- and tantra is a science. So remember, this is not Hindu at all. These techniques were conceived by Hindus, but these techniques are not Hindu. That is why these techniques will not mention any religious ritual. No temple is needed. You are quite enough of a temple yourself. You are the lab; the whole experiment is to go on within you. No belief is needed.

This is not religion, this is science. No belief is needed. It is not required to believe in the Koran or the Vedas or in Buddha or in Mahavira. No, no belief is needed. Only a daringness to experiment is enough, courage to experiment is enough; that is the beauty. A Mohammedan can practice and he will reach to the deeper meanings of the Koran. A Hindu can practice and he will for the first time know what the Vedas are. And a Jain can practice and a Buddhist can practice; they need not leave their religion. Tantra will fulfill them, wherever they are. Tantra will be helpful, whatsoever their chosen path.

So remember this, tantra is pure science. You may be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Parsee or whatsoever -- tantra doesn't touch your religion at all. Tantra says that religion is a social affair. So belong to any religion; it is irrelevant. But you can transform yourself, and that transformation needs a scientific methodology. When you are ill, when you have fallen ill or you have caught tuberculosis or anything, then whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan makes no difference. The tuberculosis remains indifferent to your Hinduism, to your Mohammedanism, to your beliefs -- political, social or religious. Tuberculosis has to be treated scientifically. There is no Hindu tuberculosis, no Mohammedan tuberculosis.

You are ignorant, you are in conflict, you are asleep. This is a disease, a spiritual disease. This disease has to be treated by the tantra. You are irrelevant, your beliefs are irrelevant. It is just a coincidence that you are born somewhere and someone else is born somewhere else. This is just a coincidence. Your religion is a coincidence, so do not cling to it. Use some scientific methods to transform yourself.

Tantra is not very well known. And even if it is known, it is very much misunderstood. There are reasons for it. The higher and purer a science, the less is the possibility that the masses will know of it. We have only heard the name of the theory of relativity. It used to be said that only twelve persons understood it when Einstein was alive. All over the world only one dozen minds could understand it. It was difficult even for Albert Einstein to make it understood to someone, to make it understandable, because it moves so high, it goes above your head. But it can be understood. A technical, mathematical knowledge is needed; a training is needed, and then it can be understood. But tantra is more difficult because no training will help. Only transformation can help.

That is why tantra could never become understood by the masses. And it always happens that when you cannot understand a thing, at least you will misunderstand, because then you can feel, "Okay, I understand." You cannot simply remain in the vacuum.

Secondly, when you cannot understand a thing, you begin to abuse it because it insults you. You cannot understand it! You? YOU cannot understand it? That is impossible. Something must be wrong with the thing itself. One begins to abuse, one begins to talk nonsense, and then he feels, "Now it is okay."

So tantra was not understood; tantra was misunderstood. It was so deep and so high that this was natural. Secondly, because tantra moves beyond duality, the very standpoint is amoral. Please understand this word: 'moral', 'immoral', 'amoral'. We understand morality, we understand immorality, but it becomes difficult if something is amoral -- beyond both.

Tantra is amoral. Look at it in this way.... A medicine is amoral; it is neither moral nor immoral. If you give it to a thief it will help; if you give it to a saint it will help. It will make no differentiation between a thief and a saint. The medicine cannot say, "This is a thief so I am going to kill him, and this is a saint so I am going to help him." A medicine is a scientific thing. Your being a thief or being a saint is irrelevant.

Tantra is amoral. Tantra says, no morality is needed -- no particular morality is needed. On the contrary, you are immoral because you have a very disturbed mind. So tantra cannot make a precondition, that first you become moral and then you can practice tantra. Tantra says, this is absurd.

Someone is ill, feverish, and the doctor comes and says, "First bring down your fever; first be quite healthy. Only then can I give you the medicine." This is what is happening.

One thief comes to a saint and he says, "I am a thief. Tell me how to meditate." The saint says, "First leave your profession. How can you meditate if you remain a thief?"

One alcoholic comes and he says, "I am an alcoholic. How can I meditate?" The saint says, "The first condition is, leave alcohol, only then can you meditate." The conditions become suicidal. The man is alcoholic or a thief or immoral because he has a disturbed mind, an ill mind. These are the effects, the consequences of the diseased mind, and he is told, "First be well and then you can meditate." But then who needs meditation? Meditation is medicinal. It is a medicine.

Tantra is amoral. It doesn't ask you who you are. Your being a man is enough. Wherever you are, whatsoever you are, you are accepted.

Choose a technique which fits you, put your total energy into it, and you will not be the same again. Real, authentic techniques always will be like that. If I make preconditions, it shows I have a pseudo technique -- I say, "First do this and first do not do that, and then..." And those are impossible conditions because a thief can change his objects, but be cannot become a non-thief.

A greedy man can change the objects of his greed, but he cannot become non-greedy. You can force him or he can force upon himself non-greed, but it is also only because of a certain greed. If heaven is promised he may even try to be non-greedy. But this is greed par excellence. Heaven, MOKSHA -- liberation; SATCHITANANDA -- existence, consciousness, bliss, they will be the objects of his greed.

Tantra says, you cannot change man unless you give him authentic techniques with which to change. Just by preaching nothing is changed. And you can see this all over the world. Whatsoever tantra says is written all over the world -- so much preaching, so much moralizing, so many priests, preachers. The whole world is filled with them, yet everything is so ugly and so immoral.
Why is this happening? The same will be the case if you give your hospitals to preachers. They will go there and they will start preaching. And they will make every ill man feel, "You are guilty! You have created this disease; now change this disease." If preachers are given hospitals, what will be the condition of hospitals? The same as the condition of the whole world.

Preachers go on preaching. They go on telling people, "Don't be angry," without giving any technique. And we have heard this teaching for so long that we never even raise the question: "What are you saying? I am angry and you simply say, `Don't be angry.' How is this possible? When I am angry it means `I' am anger, and you just tell me, `Don't be angry.' So I can only suppress myself."

But that will create more anger. That will create guilt -- because if I try to change and cannot change myself, that creates inferiority. It gives me a feeling of guilt, that I am incapable, I cannot win over my anger. No one can win! You need certain weapons, you need certain techniques, because your anger is just an indication of a disturbed mind. Change the disturbed mind and the indication will change. Anger is just showing what is within. Change the within and the without will change.

So tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality. Really, to emphasize morality is mean, degrading; it is inhuman. If someone comes to me and I say, "Leave anger first, leave sex first, leave this and that," then I am inhuman. What I am saying is impossible. And that impossibility will make that man feel inwardly mean. He will begin to feel inferior; he will be degraded inside in his own eyes. If he tries the impossible, he is going to be a failure. And when he is a failure he will be convinced that he is a sinner.

The preachers have convinced the whole world that "You are sinners." This is good for them, because unless you are convinced, their profession cannot continue. You must be sinners: only then can churches, temples and mosques continue to prosper. Your being in sin is their success. Your guilt is the base of all the highest churches. The more guilty you are, the more churches will go on rising higher and higher. They are built on your guilt, on your sin, on your inferiority complex. Thus, they have created an inferior humanity.

Tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality, your social formalities, etc. That doesn't mean that tantra says to be immoral -- no! Tantra is so much unconcerned with your morality that tantra cannot say to be immoral. Tantra gives you scientific techniques for changing the mind, and once the mind is different your character will be different. Once the basis of your structure changes, your whole edifice will be different. Because of this amoral attitude, tantra could not be tolerated by your so-called saints, they all went against it -- because if tantra succeeds, then all this nonsense which goes on in the name of religion will have to stop.

See this: Christianity fought very much against scientific progress. Why? Only because if scientific progress is there in the material world, then the time is not very far off when in the psychological and in the spiritual world also science will penetrate. So Christianity started fighting scientific progress, because once you know that you can change matter through technique, the time is not very far off when you will come to know that you can change mind through techniques -- because mind is nothing but subtle matter.

This is tantra's proposition, that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind. Change the mind, and when you look there is a different world. And if there is no mind... that is the ultimate for tantra, to bring about a state where there is no mind. Then look at the world without a mediator. When the mediator is not, you are encountering the real, because now no one is between you and the real. Then nothing can be distorted.

So tantra says that when there is no mind, that is the state of a Bhairava -- a no-mind state. For the first time you look at the world, at that which is. If you have a mind, you go on CREATING a world; you go on imposing, projecting. So first change the mind, then change from mind to no-mind. And these one hundred and twelve methods can help each and everyone. Any particular method may not be of use to you. That is why Shiva goes on relating many methods. Choose any one method which suits you. It is not difficult to know which suits you.

We will try to understand each method and how to choose for yourself one method which can change you and your mind. This understanding, this intellectual understanding will be a basic necessity, but this is not the end. Whatsoever I talk about here, try it.

Really, when you try the right method it clicks immediately. So I will go on talking about methods here every day. You try them. Just play with them -- go home and try. The right method, whenever you happen upon it, just clicks. Something explodes in you, and you know that "This is the right method for me." But effort is needed, and you may be surprised that suddenly one day one method has gripped you.

So while I am talking here, parallel to it go on playing with these methods. I say playing because you should not be too serious. Just play! Something may fit you. If it fits you, then be serious, and then go deep into it -- intensely, honestly, with all your energy, with all your mind. But before that just play.

I have found that while you are playing your mind is more open. While you are serious your mind is not so open; it is closed. So just play. Do not be too serious, just play. And these methods are simple, you can just play with them.

Take one method and play with it for at least three days. If it gives you a certain feeling of affinity, if it gives you a certain feeling of well-being, if it gives you a certain feeling that this is for you, then be serious about it. Then forget the others, do not play with other methods. Stick to it -- at least for three months. Miracles are possible. The only thing is that the technique must be for you. If the technique is not for you, then nothing happens. Then you may go on with it for lives together, but nothing will happen. If the method is for you then even three minutes are enough.

So these one hundred and twelve methods can be a miraculous experience for you, or they may just be a listening -- it depends on you. I will go on describing each method from as many angles as possible. If you feel any affinity with it, play with it for three days. If you feel that it fits, that something clicks in you, continue it for three months. Life is a miracle. If you have not known its mystery, that only shows that you do not know the technique for how to approach it.

Shiva proposes one hundred and twelve methods. These are all the methods possible. If nothing clicks and nothing gives you the feeling that this is for you, then there is no method left for you -- remember this. Then forget spirituality and be happy. Then it is not for you.

But these one hundred and twelve methods are for the whole humanity -- for all the ages that have passed and for all the ages that have yet to come. In no time has there ever been a single man, and there will never be one, who can say, "These one hundred and twelve methods are all useless for me." Impossible! This is impossible!

Every type of mind has been taken into account. Every possible type of mind has been given a technique in tantra. There are many techniques for which no man exists yet; they are for the future. There are many techniques for which no man exists now; they are for the past. But do not be afraid. There are many methods which are for you.

So we will start this journey from tomorrow.

3Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #2 周四 1月 19, 2012 1:49 pm

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
Chapter #2

Chapter title: The Path of Yoga and the Path of Tantra
2 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210025
ShortTitle: VBT102
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 100 mins

Many questions are there.
The first:

Question 1
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL YOGA AND TANTRA? ARE THEY THE SAME?

Tantra and yoga are basically different. They reach to the same goal; however, their paths are not only different, but contrary also. So this has to be understood very clearly.

The yoga process is also methodology; yoga is also technique. Yoga is not philosophy, just like tantra -- yoga depends on action, method, technique. Doing leads to being in yoga also, but the process is different. In yoga one has to fight; it is the path of the warrior. On the path of tantra one does not have to fight at all. Rather, on the contrary, one has to indulge -- but with awareness.

Yoga is suppression with awareness; tantra is indulgence with awareness. Tantra says that whatsoever you are, the ultimate is not opposite to it. It is a growth; you can grow to be the ultimate. There is no opposition between you and the reality. You are part of it, so no struggle, no conflict, no opposition to nature is needed. You have to use nature; you have to use whatsoever you are to go beyond.

In yoga you have to fight with yourself to go beyond. In yoga, the world and MOKSHA, liberation -- you as you are and you as you can be -- are two opposite things. Suppress, fight, dissolve that which you are so that you can attain that which you can be. Going beyond is a death in yoga. You must die for your real being to be born.

In the eyes of tantra, yoga is a deep suicide. You must kill your natural self -- your body, your instincts, your desires, everything. Tantra says accept yourself as you are. It is a deep acceptance. Do not create a gap between you and the real, between the world and NIRVANA. Do not create any gap. There is no gap for tantra; no death is needed. For your rebirth, no death is needed -- rather, a transcendence. For this transcendence, use yourself.

For example, sex is there, the basic energy -- the basic energy you are born through, born with. The basic cells of your being and of your body are sexual, so the human mind revolves around sex. For yoga you must fight with this energy. Through fight you create a different center in yourself. The more you fight, the more you become integrated in a different center. Then sex is not your center. Fighting with sex -- of course, consciously -- will create in you a new center of being, a new emphasis, a new crystallization. Then sex will not be your energy. You will create your energy fighting with sex. A different energy will come into being and a different center of existence.

For tantra you have to use the energy of sex. Do not fight with it, transform it. Do not think in terms of enmity, be friendly to it. It is your energy. It is not evil, it is not bad. Every energy is just natural. It can be used for you, it can be used against you. You can make a block of it, a barrier, or you can make it a step. It can be used. Rightly used, it becomes friendly; wrongly used, it becomes your enemy. But it is neither. Energy is just natural. As ordinary man is using sex, it becomes an enemy, it destroys him; he simply dissipates in it.

Yoga takes the opposite view -- opposite to the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind is being destroyed by its own desires, so yoga says stop desiring, be desireless. Fight desire and create an integration in you which is desireless.
Tantra says be aware of the desire; do not create any fight. Move in desire with full consciousness, and when you move into desire with full consciousness you transcend it. You are into it and still you are not in it. You pass through it, but you remain an outsider.

Yoga appeals much because yoga is just the opposite of the ordinary mind, so the ordinary mind can understand the language of yoga. You know how sex is destroying you -- how it has destroyed you, how you go on revolving around it like a slave, like a puppet. You know this by your experience. So when yoga says fight it, you immediately understand the language. That is the appeal, the easy appeal of yoga.

Tantra can not be so easily appealing. It seems difficult: how to move into desire without being overwhelmed by it? How to be in the sex act consciously, with full awareness? The ordinary mind becomes afraid. It seems dangerous. Not that it is dangerous; whatsoever you know about sex creates this danger for you. You know yourself, you know how you can deceive yourself. You know very well that your mind is cunning. You can move in desire, in sex, in everything, and you can deceive yourself that you are moving with full awareness. That is why you feel the danger.

The danger is not in tantra; it is in you. And the appeal of yoga is because of you, because of your ordinary mind, your sex-suppressed, sex-starved, sex-indulging mind. Because the ordinary mind is not healthy about sex, yoga has an appeal. With a better humanity, with a healthy sex -- natural, normal -- the case would be different. We are not normal and natural. We are absolutely abnormal, unhealthy, really insane. But because everyone is like us, we never feel it.

Madness is so normal that not to be mad may look abnormal. A Buddha is abnormal, a Jesus is abnormal amidst us. They do not belong to us. This "normalcy" is a disease. This "normal" mind has created the appeal of yoga. If you take sex naturally -- with no philosophy around it, with no philosophy for or against -- if you take sex as you take your hands, your eyes; if it is totally accepted as a natural thing, then tantra will have an appeal. And only then can tantra be useful for many.

But the days of tantra are coming. Sooner or later tantra will explode for the first time in the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe -- ripe to take sex naturally. It is possible that the explosion may come from the West, because Freud, Jung, Reich, they have prepared the background. They did not know anything about tantra, but they have made the basic ground for tantra to evolve. Western psychology has come to a conclusion that the basic human disease is somewhere around sex, the basic insanity of man is sex-oriented.

So unless this sex orientation is dissolved, man cannot be natural, normal. Man has gone wrong only because of his attitudes about sex. No attitude is needed. Only then are you natural. What attitude have you about your eyes? Are they evil or are they divine? Are you for your eyes or against them? There is no attitude! That is why your eyes are normal.
Take some attitude -- think that eyes are evil. Then seeing will become difficult. Then seeing will take the same problematic shape that sex has taken. Then you will want to see, you will desire and you will hanker to see. But when you see you will feel guilty. Whenever you see you will feel guilty that you have done something wrong, that you have sinned. You would like to kill your very instrument of seeing; you would like to destroy your eyes. And the more you want to destroy them, the more you will become eye centered. Then you will start a very absurd activity. You will want to see more and more, and simultaneously you will feel more and more guilty. The same has happened with the sex center.

Tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. This is the basic note -- total acceptance. And only through total acceptance can you grow. Then use every energy you have. How can you use them? Accept them, then find out what these energies are -- what is sex, what is this phenomenon. We are not acquainted with it. We know many things about sex, taught by others. We may have passed through the sex act, but with a guilty mind, with a suppressive attitude, in haste, in a hurry. Something has to be done in order to become unburdened. The sex act is not a loving act. You are not happy in it, but you cannot leave it. The more you try to leave it, the more attractive it becomes. The more you want to negate it, the more you feel invited.

You cannot negate it, but this attitude to negate, to destroy, destroys the very mind, the very awareness, the very sensitivity which can understand it. So sex goes on with no sensitivity into it. Then you cannot understand it. Only a deep sensitivity can understand anything; only a deep feeling, a deep moving into it, can understand anything. You can understand sex only if you move in it as a poet moves amidst flowers -- only then! If you feel guilty about flowers, you may pass through the garden, but you will pass with closed eyes. And you will be in a hurry, in a deep, mad haste. Somehow you have to go out of the garden. Then how can you be aware?

So tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. You are a great mystery of many multidimensional energies. Accept it, and move with every energy with deep sensitivity, with awareness, with love, with understanding. Move with it! Then every desire becomes a vehicle to go beyond it. Then every energy becomes a help. And then this very world is nirvana, this very body is a temple -- a holy temple, a holy place.

Yoga is negation; tantra is affirmation. Yoga thinks in terms of duality -- that is the reason for the word `yoga'. It means to put two things together, to `yoke' two things together. But two things are there; the duality is there. Tantra says there is no duality. If there is duality, then you cannot put them together. And howsoever you try they will remain two. Howsoever put together they will remain two, and the fight will continue, the dualism will remain.

If the world and the divine are two, then they cannot be put together. If really they are not two, if they are only appearing as two, only then can they be one. If your body and your soul are two, then they cannot be put together. If you and God are two, then there is no possibility of putting them together. They will remain two.

Tantra says there is no duality; it is only an appearance. So why help appearance to grow stronger? Tantra asks, why help this appearance of duality to grow stronger? Dissolve it this very moment! Be one! Through acceptance you become one, not through fight. Accept the world, accept the body, accept everything that is inherent in it. Do not create a different center in yourself, because for tantra that different center is nothing but the ego. Do not create an ego. Just be aware of what you are.

If you fight, then the ego will be there.
So it is difficult to find a yogi who is not an egoist. And yogis may go on talking about egolessness, but they cannot be egoless. The very process they go through creates the ego. The fight is the process. If you fight, you are bound to create an ego. And the more you fight, the more strengthened the ego will be. And if you win your fight, then you will achieve the supreme ego.

Tantra says, no fight! Then there is no possibility of the ego. If we understand tantra there will be many problems, because for us, if there is no fight there is only indulgence. No fight means indulgence for us. Then we become afraid. We have indulged for lives together and we have reached nowhere. But for tantra indulgence is not "our" indulgence. Tantra says indulge, but be aware.
You are angry... tantra will not say do not be angry. Tantra will say be angry wholeheartedly, but be aware. Tantra is not against anger, tantra is only against spiritual sleepiness, spiritual unconsciousness. Be aware AND be angry. And this is the secret of the method -- that if you are aware anger is transformed: it becomes compassion. So tantra says anger is not your enemy; it is compassion in seed form. The same anger, the same energy, will become compassion.

If you fight with it, then there will be no possibility for compassion. So if you succeed in fighting, in suppression, you will be a dead man. There will be no anger because you have suppressed it, but there will be no compassion either because only anger can be transformed into compassion. If you succeed in your suppression -- which is impossible -- then there will be no sex, but no love either, because with sex dead there is no energy to grow into love. So you will be without sex, but you will also be without love. And then the whole point is missed, because without love there is no divineness, without love there is no liberation, and without love there is no freedom.

Tantra says that these same energies are to be transformed. It can be said in this way: if you are against the world, then there is no nirvana -- because this world itself is to be transformed into nirvana. Then you are against the basic energies which are the source.

So tantric alchemy says, do not fight, be friendly with all the energies that are given to you. Welcome them. Feel grateful that you have anger, that you have sex, that you have greed. Feel grateful because these are the hidden sources, and they can be transformed, they can be opened. And when sex is transformed it becomes love. The poison is lost, the ugliness is lost.
The seed is ugly, but when it becomes alive it sprouts and flowers. Then there is beauty. Do not throw away the seed, because then you are also throwing the flowers in it. They are not there yet, not yet manifest so that you can see them. They are unmanifest, but they are there. Use this seed so that you can attain to flowers. So first let there be acceptance, a sensitive understanding and awareness. Then indulgence is allowed.

One thing more which is really very strange, but one of the deepest discoveries of tantra, and that is: whatsoever you take as your enemies -- greed, anger, hate, sex, whatsoever -- your attitude that they are enemies makes them your enemies. Take them as divine gifts and approach them with a very grateful heart. For example, tantra has developed many techniques for the transformation of sexual energy. Approach the sex act as if you are approaching the temple of the divine. Approach the sex act as if it is prayer, as if it is meditation. Feel the holiness of it.

That is why in Khajuraho, in Puri, in Konark, every temple has MAITHUN, intercourse sculptures. The sex act on the walls of temples seems illogical, particularly for Christianity, for Islam, for Jainism. It seems inconceivable, contradictory. How is the temple connected with maithun pictures? On the outer walls of the Khajuraho temples, every conceivable type of sex act is pictured in stone. Why? In a temple it doesn't have any place, in our minds at least. Christianity cannot conceive of a church wall with Khajuraho pictures. Impossible!

Modern Hindus also feel guilty because the minds of modern Hindus are created by Christianity. They are "Hindu-Christians" -- and they are worse, because to be a Christian is good, but to be a Hindu-Christian is just weird. They feel guilty. One Hindu leader, Purshottamdas Tandon, even proposed that these temples should be destroyed, that they do not belong to us. Really, it looks like they do not belong to us because tantra has not been in our hearts for a long time, for centuries. It has not been the main current. Yoga has been the main current, and for yoga Khajuraho is inconceivable -- it must be destroyed.

Tantra says, approach the sex act as if you are entering a holy temple. That is why they have pictured the sex act on their holy temples. They have said, approach sex as if you are entering a holy temple. Thus, when you enter a holy temple sex must be there in order that the two become conjoined in your mind, associated. Then you can feel that the world and the divine are not two fighting elements, but one. They are not contradictory, they are just polar opposites helping each other. And they can exist only because of this polarity. If this polarity is lost, the whole world is lost. So see the deep oneness running through everything. Do not see only the polar opposites, see the inner running current which makes them one.

For tantra everything is holy. Remember this, for tantra EVERYTHING is holy; nothing is unholy. Look at it this way: for an irreligious person, everything is unholy; for so-called religious persons something is holy, something is unholy.
For tantra, everything is holy.

One Christian missionary was with me a few days ago and he said, "God created the world." So I asked him, "Who created sin?" He said, "The devil."

Then I asked him, "Who created the devil?" Then he was at a loss. He said, "Of course, God created the devil."
The devil creates sin and God creates the devil. Then who is the real sinner -- the devil or God? But the dualist conception always leads to such absurdities. For tantra God and the devil are not two. Really, for tantra there is nothing that can be called "devil", everything is divine, everything is holy. And this seems to be the right standpoint, the deepest. If anything is unholy in this world, from where does it come and how can it be?

So only two alternatives are there. First, the alternative of the atheist who says everything is unholy. This attitude is okay. He is also a non-dualist; he sees no holiness in the world. Then there is the tantric's alternative -- he says everything is holy. He is also a non-dualist. But between these two are the so-called religious persons, who are not really religious. They are neither religious nor irreligious because they are always in a conflict. Their whole theology is just to make ends meet, and those ends cannot meet.

If a single cell, a single atom in this world is unholy, then the whole world becomes unholy, because how can that single atom exist in a holy world? How can it be? It is supported by everything; to be, it has to be supported by everything. And if the unholy element is supported by all the holy elements, then what is the difference between them? So either the world is holy totally, unconditionally, or it is unholy; there is no middle path.

Tantra says everything is holy, that is why we cannot understand it. It is the deepest non-dual standpoint -- if we can call it a standpoint. It is not, because any standpoint is bound to be dual. It is not against anything, so it is not any standpoint. It is a felt unity, a lived unity.

These are two paths, yoga and tantra. Tantra could not be so appealing because of our crippled minds. But whenever there is someone who is healthy inside, not a chaos, tantra has a beauty. Only he can understand what tantra is. Yoga has appeal, an easy appeal, because of our disturbed minds.
Remember, it is ultimately your mind which makes anything attractive or unattractive. It is you who is the deciding factor.

These approaches are different. I am not saying that one cannot reach through yoga. One can reach through yoga also, but not through the yoga which is prevalent. The yoga which is prevalent is not really yoga, but the interpretation of your diseased minds. Yoga can be authentically an approach toward the ultimate, but that too is only possible when your mind is healthy, when your mind is not diseased and ill. Then yoga takes a different shape.

For example, Mahavir was on the path of yoga, but he was not really suppressing sex. He had known it, he had lived it, he was deeply acquainted with it. But it became useless to him, so it dropped. Buddha was on the path of yoga, but he had lived through the world, he was deeply acquainted with it. He was not fighting.

Once you know something you become free from it. It simply drops like dead leaves dropping from a tree. It is not renunciation; there is no fight involved at all. Look at Buddha's face -- it doesn't look like the face of a fighter. He has not been fighting. He is so relaxed; his face is the very symbol of relaxation... no fight.

Look at your yogis. The fight is apparent on their faces. Deep down much turmoil is there -- right now they are sitting on volcanos. You can look in their eyes, in their faces, and you will feel it. Deep down somewhere they have suppressed all their diseases; they have not gone beyond.

In a healthy world, where everyone is living his life authentically, individually, not imitating others but living his own life in his own way, both are possible. He may learn the deep sensitivity which transcends desires; he may come to a point where all desires become futile and drop. Yoga can also lead to this, but to me yoga will lead to it in the same world where tantra can lead to it -- remember this. We need a healthy mind, a natural man. In that world where a natural man is, tantra, and yoga also, will lead to transcendence of desires.

In our so-called ill society, neither yoga nor tantra can do this, because if we choose yoga we do not choose it because desires have become useless -- no! They are still meaningful; they are not dropping by themselves. We have to force them. If we choose yoga, we choose it as a technique of suppression. If we choose tantra, we choose tantra as a cunningness, as a deep deception -- an excuse to indulge.

So with an unhealthy mind neither yoga nor tantra can work. They will both lead to deceptions. A healthy mind, particularly a sexually healthy mind, is needed to start with. Then it is not very difficult to choose your path. You can choose yoga, you can choose tantra.

There are two types of persons basically, male and female. I do not mean biologically, but psychologically. For those who are psychologically basically male -- aggressive, violent, extrovert -- yoga is their path. For those who are basically feminine, receptive, passive, non-violent, tantra is their path. So you may note it: for tantra, Mother Kali, Tara, and so many DEVIS, BHAIRAVIS -- female deities -- are very significant. In yoga you will never hear mentioned any name of a feminine deity. Tantra has feminine deities; yoga has male gods. Yoga is outgoing energy; tantra is energy moving inwards. So you can say in modern psychological terms that yoga is extrovert and tantra is introvert. So it depends on the personality. If you have an introverted personality, then fight is not for you. If you have an extroverted personality, then fight is for you.

But we are just confused, we are just in a mess; that is why nothing helps. On the contrary, everything disturbs. Yoga will disturb you, tantra will disturb you. Every medicine is going to create a new illness for you because the chooser is ill, diseased; so the result of his choice will be illness. So I do not mean that through yoga you cannot reach. I emphasize tantra only because we are going to try to understand what tantra is.

Another question:
Question 2
ON THE PATH OF SURRENDER, HOW DOES THE SEEKER COME TO THE RIGHT TECHNIQUE OUT OF ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE METHODS?

On the path of will there are methods -- these one hundred and twelve methods. On the path of surrender, surrender itself is the method, there are no other methods -- remember this. All methods are non-surrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. You can do something; the technique is there, so you do it. On the path of surrender, you are no more, so you cannot do anything. You have done the ultimate, the last: you have surrendered. On the path of surrender, surrender is the only method.

All these one hundred and twelve methods require a certain will; they require something to be done by you. You manipulate your energy, you balance your energy, you create a center in your chaos. You do something. Your effort is significant, basic, required. On the path of surrender only one thing is required -- you surrender. We will go deep into these one hundred and twelve methods, so it is good to say something about surrender because it has no method.

In these one hundred and twelve methods there will be nothing about surrender. Why has Shiva not said anything about surrender? Because nothing can be said. Bhairavi herself, Devi herself, has reached Shiva not through any method. She has simply surrendered. So this must be noted. She is asking these questions not for herself, these questions are asked for the whole humanity. She has attained Shiva. She is already in his lap; she is already embraced by him. She has become one with him, but still she is asking.

So remember one thing, she is not asking for herself; there is no need. She is asking for the whole humanity. But if she has attained, why is she asking Shiva? Can she herself not speak to the humanity? She has come through the path of surrender, so she doesn't know anything about method. She herself has come through love; love is enough unto itself. Love doesn't need anything more. She has come through love, so she doesn't know anything about any methods, techniques. That is why she is asking.

So Shiva relates one hundred and twelve methods. He also will not talk about surrender because surrender is not a method really. You surrender only when every method has become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do, and now you feel helpless. In that total helplessness surrender happens. So on the path of surrender there is no method.

But what is surrender and how does it work? And if surrender works, then what is the need of one hundred and twelve methods? Then why go into them unnecessarily? -- the mind will ask. Then okay! If surrender works, it is better to surrender. Why go on hankering after methods? And who knows whether a particular method will suit you or not? And it may take lives to find out. So it is good to surrender, but it is difficult. It is the most difficult thing in the world.

Methods are not difficult. They are easy; you can train yourself. But for surrender you cannot train yourself... no training! You cannot ask how to surrender; the very question is absurd. How can you ask how to surrender? Can you ask how to love?

Either there is love or there is not, but you cannot ask how to love. And if someone tells you and teaches you how to love, remember, then you will never be capable of love. Once a technique is given to you for love, you will cling to the technique. That is why actors cannot love. They know so many techniques, so many methods -- and we are all actors. Once you know the trick how to love, then love will not flower because you can create a facade, a deception. And with the deception you are out of it, not involved. You are protected.

Love is being totally open, vulnerable. It is dangerous. You become insecure. We cannot ask how to love, we cannot ask how to surrender. It happens! Love happens, surrender happens. Love and surrender are deeply one. But what is it? And if we cannot know how to surrender, at least we can know how we are maintaining ourselves from surrendering, how we are preventing ourselves from surrendering. That can be known and that is helpful.

How is it that you have not surrendered yet? What is your technique of non-surrendering? If you have not fallen in love yet, then the real problem is not how to love. The real problem is to dig deep to find out how you have lived without love, what is your trick, what is your technique, what is your structure -- your defense structure, how you have lived without love. That can be understood, and that should be understood.

First thing: we live with the ego, in the ego, centered in the ego. I am without knowing who I am. I go on announcing, "I am." This "I-am-ness" is false, because I do not know who I am. And unless I know who I am, how can I say "I"? This "I" is a false "I". This false "I" is the ego. This is the defense. This protects you from surrendering.

You cannot surrender, but you can become aware of this defense measure. If you have become aware of it, it dissolves. By and by, you are not strengthening it, and one day you come to feel, "I am not." The moment you come to feel "I am not," surrender happens. So try to find out whether you are. Really, is there any center in you that you can call your "I"?. Go deep down within yourself, go on trying to find out where is this "I", where is the abode of this ego.

Rinzai went to his master and he said, "Give me freedom!" The master said, "Bring yourself. If you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you free? You are already free. And freedom," his master said, "is not your freedom. Really, freedom is freedom from `you'. So go and find out where this `I' is, where you are, then come to me. This is the meditation. Go and meditate."

So the disciple Rinzai goes and meditates for weeks, months, and then he comes. Then he says, "I am not the body. Only this much I have found." So the master says, "This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find out." Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that "I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed -- I am not my mind." He comes and says, "I am not my mind." So his master says, "Now you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find
out who you are."

So he was thinking, "I am not my body. I am not my mind." He had read, studied, he was well informed, so he was thinking, "I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my soul, my ATMA." But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atma is nothing but your mental information -- just doctrines, words, philosophies.

So he came running one day and he said, "Now I am no more!" Then his master said, "Am I now to teach you the methods for freedom?" Rinzai said, "I am free because I am no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness."

Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are, you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Rinzai came running and said, "I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found." This is freedom. And for the first time he touched his master's feet -- for the first time! Not actually, because he had touched them many times before also. But the master said, "For the first time you have touched my feet."

Rinzai asked, "Why do you say for the first time? I have touched your feet many times." The master said, "But you were there, so how could you touch my feet while you were already there? While you are there how can you touch my feet?" The "I" can never touch anybody's feet. Even though it apparently looks like it touches somebody's feet, it is touching its own feet, just in a round-about way. "You have touched my feet for the first time," the master said, "because now you are no more. And this is also the last time," the master said. "The first and the last."

Surrender happens when you are not, so YOU cannot surrender. That is why surrender cannot be a technique. You cannot surrender -- you are the hindrance. When you are not, surrender is there. So you and surrender cannot cohabit, there is no coexistence between you and surrender. Either you are or surrender is. So find out where you are, who you are. This inquiry creates many, many surprising results.

Raman Maharshi used to say, "Inquire `Who am I ?'" It was misunderstood. Even his nearest disciples have not understood the meaning of it. They think that this is an inquiry to find out really "Who am I?" It is not! if you go on inquiring "Who am I?" you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is not really an inquiry to find out "Who am I?" Really, this is an inquiry to dissolve.

I have given many this technique, to inquire within "Who am I?" Then a month or two months later, they will come to me and say, "I have still not found `Who am I?' The question is still the same; there is no answer."

So I tell them, "Continue. Someday the answer will come." And they hope that the answer will come. There is going to be no answer. It is only that the question will dissolve. There is not going to be an answer, that "You are this." Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask even "Who am I?" And then you know.

When the "I" is not, the real "I" opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered. You are surrender now. So there can be no techniques, or only negative techniques like this inquiry into "Who am I?"

How does surrender work? If you surrender, what happens? We will come to understand how methods work. We will go deep into methods, and we will come to know how they work. They have a scientific basis of working.

When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. The others may recognize you, may not recognize you -- that is another thing. You recognize that you are above everyone. You are like a peak; nothing can enter you.

When one surrenders, one becomes like a valley. One becomes depth, not height. Then the whole existence begins to pour into him from everywhere. He is just a vacuum, just a depth, an abyss, bottomless. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere.

You can say God runs from everywhere to him, enters him from every pore, fills him totally.
This surrender, this becoming a valley, an abyss, can be felt in many ways. There are minor surrenders; there are major surrenders. Even in minor surrenders you feel it. Surrendering to a master is a minor surrender, but you begin to feel it because the master begins to flow into you immediately. If you surrender to a master, suddenly you feel his energy flowing into you. If you cannot feel energy flowing into you, then know well you have not surrendered even in a minor way.

There are so many stories which have become meaningless for us because we do not know how they happened. Mahakashyap came to Buddha, and Buddha just touched his head with his hand, and the thing happened. And Mahakashyap began to dance. So Ananda asked Buddha, "What has happened to him? And I have been for forty years with you! Is he mad? Or is he just fooling others? What has happened to him? And I have touched your feet thousands and thousands of times."

Of course, to Ananda, this Mahakashyap will either look like he is mad or as if he is just deceiving. He was with Buddha for forty years, but there was a problem. He was his elder brother, Buddha's elder brother; that was the problem. When Ananda came to Buddha forty years before, the first thing he said to Buddha was this: "I am your elder brother, and when you will initiate me, I will become your disciple. So allow me three things before I become your disciple, because then I cannot demand. One, I will always be with you. Give me this promise, that you will not say to me, `Go somewhere else.' I will follow you.
"Secondly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. You cannot say to me, `Go out.' I will be with you like your shadow.

And thirdly, if I bring anyone at any time, even at midnight, you will have to answer him. You cannot say, `This is not the time.' And give me these three promises while I am still your elder brother, because once I become your disciple I will have to follow you. You are still younger than me, so give me these promises."

So Buddha promised, and this became the problem. For forty years Ananda was with Buddha, but he could never surrender, because this is not the spirit of surrender. Ananda asked many, many times, "When am I going to attain?" Buddha said, "Unless I die, you will not attain." And Ananda could attain only when Buddha died.

What happened to this Mahakashyap suddenly? Is Buddha partial -- partial to Mahakashyap? He is not! He is flowing, constantly flowing. But you have to be a valley, a womb, to receive him. If you are above him, how can you receive? That flowing energy cannot come to you, it will miss you. So bow down. Even in a minor surrender with a master, energy begins to flow. Suddenly, immediately, you become a vehicle of a great force.

There are thousands and thousands of stories... just by a touch, just by a look, someone became enlightened. They do not appear rational to us. How is this possible? This is possible! Even a look from the master into your eyes will change your total being, but it can change only if your eyes are just vacant, valley-like. If you can absorb the look of the master, immediately you will be different.

So these are minor surrenders that happen before you surrender totally. And these minor surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. Once you have known that through surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, never even dreamed of, then you are ready for a major surrender. And that is the work of the master -- to help you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, for a total surrender.

One last question:
Question 3
WHAT ARE THE EXACT INDICATIONS TO KNOW THAT THE PARTICULAR TECHNIQUE ONE IS PRACTISING WILL LEAD TO THE ULTIMATE?

There are indications. One, you begin to feel a different identity within you. You are no more the same. If the technique fits you, immediately you are a different person. If you are a husband, you are no more the same husband. If you are a shopkeeper, you are never again the same shopkeeper. Whatsoever you are, if the technique fits you, you are a different person; that is the first indication. So if you begin to feel strange about yourself, know that something is happening to you. If you remain the same and do not feel any strangeness, nothing is happening. This is the first indication of whether a technique fits you. If it fits, immediately you are transported, transformed into a different person. Suddenly this happens: you look at the world in a different way. The eyes are the same, but the looker behind them is different.

Secondly, all that creates tensions, conflicts, starts dropping. It is not that when you have practiced the method for years, then your conflicts, anxieties, tensions will drop -- no! If the method fits you, immediately they start dropping. You can feel an aliveness coming to you; you are being unburdened. You will begin to feel, if the technique fits you, that gravity has become reversed. Now the earth is not pulling you down. Rather, the sky is pulling you up. How do you feel when an airplane takes off?

Everything is disturbed. Suddenly there is a jerk, and gravity becomes meaningless. Now the earth is not pulling you, you are going away from gravity.

The same jerk happens if a meditative technique fits you. Suddenly you take off. Suddenly you feel the earth has become meaningless; there is no gravity. It is not pulling you down, you are being pulled up. In religious terminology, this is called "grace". There are two forces -- gravity and grace. Grace means you are being pulled upwards; gravity means you are being pulled downwards.

That is why in meditation many people suddenly feel they have no weight. That is why many people feel an inner levitation. So many have reported this to me when the technique fits them: "This is strange! We close our eyes and we feel that we are a little bit above the earth -- one foot, two feet, even four feet above the earth. When we open our eyes we are just on the ground; when we close our eyes we have levitated. So what is this? When we open our eyes we are just on the ground! We never levitated."

The body remains on the ground, but you levitate. This levitation is really a pull from the above. If the technique fits you have been pulled, because the working of the technique is to make available for you the upward pull. This is what the technique means: to make you available for the force which can pull you up. So if it fits, you know -- you have become weightless.

Thirdly, whatsoever you will now do, whatsoever, howsoever trivial, will be different. You will walk in a different way, you will sit in a different way, you will eat in a different way. Everything will be different. This difference you will feel everywhere. Sometimes this strange experience of being different creates fear. One wants again to go back and be the same, because one was so attuned with the old. It was a routine world, even boring, but you were efficient in it.

Now everywhere you will feel a gap. You will feel that your efficiency is lost. You will feel that your utility is reduced. You will feel that everywhere you are an outsider. One has to pass through this period. You will become attuned again. You have changed, not the world, so you will not fit. So remember the third thing: When the technique fits you, you will not fit into the world. You will become unfit. Everywhere something is loose, some bolt is missing. Everywhere you will feel that there has been an earthquake. And everything has remained the same; only you, you, have become different. But you will be attuned again on a different plane, on a higher plane.

The disturbance is felt just like when a child grows and becomes sexually mature. At the age of fourteen or fifteen every boy feels that he has become strange. A new force has entered -- sex. It was not there before, or it was, but it was hidden. Now for the first time he has become available for a new kind of force. That is why boys are very awkward; girls, boys, when they become sexually mature, they are very awkward. They are nowhere. They are no longer children and they are not yet men, so they are in between, fitting nowhere. If they play with small children they feel awkward -- they have become men. If they start making friendships with men they feel awkward -- they are still children. They fit with no one.

The same phenomenon happens when a technique fits you. A new energy source becomes available that is greater than sex. You are again in a transitory period. Now you cannot fit in this world of worldly men. You are not a child, and you cannot yet fit in the world of saints; and in between one feels awkward.

If a technique fits you these three things will come up. You may not have expected that I would say these things. You may have expected that I would say you will become more silent, more quiet, and I am saying quite the contrary: you will become more disturbed. When the technique fits you will become more disturbed, not more silent. Silence will come later on. And if silence comes and not disturbance, know well that this is not a technique; this is just getting adjusted to the old pattern.

That is why more people go for a prayer than for meditation because prayer gives you a consolation. It fits you, adjusts to you, to your world. Prayer was doing virtually the same thing that psychoanalysts are now doing. If you are disturbed they will make you less disturbed, adjusted to the pattern, to the society, to the family. So by going to a psychoanalyst for one, two or three years you will not get better, but you will be more adjusted. Prayer does the same thing, and priests do the same thing -- they make you more adjusted.

Your child has died and you are disturbed, and you go to a priest. He says, "Do not be disturbed. Only those children die early whom God loves more. He calls them up." You feel satisfied. Your child has been "called up." God loves him more. Or the priest says something else: "Do not be worried, the soul never dies. Your child is in heaven."

One woman was here just a few days before. Her husband had died just during the past month. She was disturbed. She came to me and she said, "Only assure me that he is reborn in a good place and then everything will be okay. Just give me a certainty that he has not gone to hell or he has not become an animal, that he is in heaven or he has become a god or some such thing. If you can just assure me of this, then everything is okay. Then I can bear it; otherwise I am miserable."

The priest would say, "Okay! Your husband is born as a god in the seventh heaven, and he is very happy. And he is waiting for you."

These prayers, they make you adjusted to the pattern... you feel better. Meditation is a science. It is not going to help you in adjustment, it is going to help you in transformation. That is why I say these three signs will be there as indications. Silence will come, but not as an adjustment. Silence will come as an inner flowering. Then silence will not be an adjustment with the society, with the family, the world, the business -- no! Then silence will be a real harmony with the universe.

Then a deep harmony flowers between you and the totality, then there is silence -- but that will come later. First you will get disturbed, first you will become mad.

If a technique fits, it will make you aware of everything that you are. Your anarchy, your mind, your madness, everything will come to light. You are just a dark mess. When a technique fits, it is as if suddenly there is light and the whole mess becomes apparent. For the first time you will encounter yourself as you are. You would like to put the light off and go to sleep again -- it is fearful. This is the point where the master becomes helpful. He says, "Do not be afraid. This is just the beginning. And do not escape from it."

At first this light shows you what you are, and if you can go on and on, it transforms you toward what you can be.

Enough for today.

4Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #3 周四 1月 19, 2012 2:03 pm

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
Chapter #3

Chapter title: Breath -- a bridge to the universe
3 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210035
ShortTitle: VBT103
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 91 mins

SUTRAS:
SHIVA REPLIES:

1. RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. AFTER BREATH COMES IN (DOWN) AND JUST BEFORE TURNING UP (OUT) -- THE BENEFICENCE.
2. AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN -- THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.
3. OR, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER.
4. OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN (DOWN) AND STOPPED -- IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE'S SMALL SELF VANISHES. THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE.

Truth is always here. It is already the case. It is not something to be achieved in the future. YOU are the truth just here and now, so it is not something which is to be created or something which is to be devised or something which is to be sought. Understand this very clearly; then these techniques will be easy to understand and also to do.

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move -- there is no space. The mind needs the future in order to move. It can move either in the past or in the future. It cannot move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth.

When the mind is seeking worldly objects it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes nonsense, because the truth is here and now and the mind is always then and there. There is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance.

The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from yourself, because YOU are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and the seeking is in the future, you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao Tzu says, "Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don't seek and find."

All these techniques of Shiva's are simply turning the mind from the future or the past to the present. That which you are seeking is already there, it is the case already. The mind has to be turned from seeking to non-seeking. It is difficult. If you think about it intellectually it is very difficult. How to turn the mind from seeking to non-seeking? -- because then the mind makes non-seeking itself the object! Then the mind says, "Don't seek." Then the mind says, "I should not seek." Then the mind says, "Now non-seeking is my object. Now I desire the state of desirelessness." The seeking has entered again, the desire has come again through the back door. That is why there are people who are seeking worldly objects, and there are people who think they are seeking non-worldly objects. All objects are worldly because "seeking" is the world.

So you cannot seek anything non-worldly. The moment you seek, it becomes the world. If you are seeking God, your God is part of the world. If you are seeking MOKSHA -- liberation -- NIRVANA, your liberation is part of the world, your liberation is not something that transcends the world, because seeking is the world, desiring is the world. So you cannot desire nirvana, you cannot desire non-desire. If you try to understand intellectually, it will become a puzzle.

Shiva says nothing about it, he immediately proceeds to give techniques. They are non-intellectual. He doesn't say to Devi, "The truth is here. Don't seek it and you will find it." He immediately gives techniques. Those techniques are non-intellectual. Do them, and the mind turns. The turning is just a consequence, just a by-product -- not an object. The turning is just a by-product.

If you do a technique, your mind will turn from its journey into the future or the past. Suddenly you will find yourself in the present. That is why Buddha has given techniques, Lao Tzu has given techniques, Krishna has given techniques. But they always introduce their techniques with intellectual concepts. Only Shiva is different. He immediately gives techniques, and no intellectual understanding, no intellectual introduction, because he knows that the mind is tricky, the most cunning thing possible. It can turn anything into a problem. Non-seeking will become the problem.

There are people who come to me who ask how not to desire. They are desiring non-desire. Somebody has told them, or they have read somewhere, or they have heard spiritual gossip, that if you do not desire you will reach bliss, if you do not desire you will be free, if you do not desire there will be no suffering. Now their minds hanker to attain that state where there is no suffering, so they ask how not to desire. Their minds are playing tricks. They are still desiring, it is only that now the object has changed. They were desiring money, they were desiring fame, they were desiring prestige, they were desiring power. Now they are desiring non-desire. Only the object has changed, and they remain the same and their desiring remains the same. But now the desire has become more deceptive.

Because of this, Shiva proceeds immediately with no introduction whatsoever. He immediately starts talking about techniques. Those techniques, if followed, suddenly turn your mind: it comes to the present. And when the mind comes to the present it stops, it is no more. You cannot be a mind in the present, that is impossible. Just now, if you are here and now, how can you be a mind? Thoughts cease because they cannot move. The present has no space in which to move; you cannot think. If you are in this very moment, how can you move? Mind stops, you attain to no-mind.

So the real thing is how to be here and now. You can try, but effort may prove futile -- because if you make it a point to be in the present, then this point has moved into the future. When you ask how to be in the present, again you are asking about the future. This moment is passing in the inquiry, "How to be present? How to be here and now?" This present moment is passing in the inquiry, and your mind will begin to weave and create dreams in the future: some day you will be in a state of mind where there is no movement, no motive, no seeking, and then there will be bliss -- so how to be in the present?

Shiva doesn't say anything about it, he simply gives a technique. You do it, and suddenly you find you are here and now. And your being here and now is the truth, and your being here and now is the freedom, and your being here and now is the nirvana.
The first nine techniques are concerned with breathing. So let us understand something about breathing, and then we will proceed to the techniques. We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill, everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful -- whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant -- one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe.

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why YOU are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done. So, really, YOU are not breathing, because YOU are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing is something which goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality -- that is the first thing. It is something which is very essential and basic to life -- that is the second thing. You cannot be alive without breath. So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it PRANA. We have given one word for both -- PRANA means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe -- every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant -- the most significant thing. So the first nine techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the "no-body," from the "no-body" to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

But remember, what Shiva is going to say is not yoga, it is tantra. Yoga also works on breath, but the work of yoga and tantra is basically different. Yoga tries to systematize breathing. If you systematize your breathing your health will improve. If you systematize your breathing, if you know the secrets of breathing, your life will become longer; you will be more healthy and you will live longer. You will be more strong, more filled with energy, more vital, alive, young, fresh.

But tantra is not concerned with that. Tantra is concerned not with any systematization of breath, but with using breath just as a technique to turn inward. One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing -- no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing -- we are born breathing and we will die breathing -- but we are not aware of certain points. And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life. There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors -- the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness. But they are very subtle.

To observe a moon is not very difficult. Even to reach the moon is not very difficult; it is a gross journey. You need mechanization, you need technology, you need accumulated information, and then you can reach it. Breathing is the nearest thing to you, and the nearer a thing is, the more difficult it is to perceive it. The nearer it is, the more difficult; the more obvious it is, the more difficult. It is so near to you that again there is no space between you and your breathing. Or, there is such a small space that you will need a very minute observation, only then will you become aware of certain points. These points are the basis of these techniques.

So now I will take each technique.

SHIVA REPLIES:
RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. AFTER BREATH COMES IN (DOWN) AND JUST BEFORE TURNING UP (OUT) -- THE BENEFICENCE.

That is the technique:
RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS.

After breath comes in -- that is, down -- and just before turning out -- that is, going up -- THE BENEFICENCE. Be aware between these two points, and the happening. When your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, or a thousandth part of a moment, there is no breathing -- before it turns up, before it turns outward. One breath comes in; then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops. Then breathing comes in.

Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing you are not in the world. Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you ARE still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it.

For tantra, each outgoing breath is a death and each new breath is a rebirth. Breath coming in is rebirth; breath going out is death. The outgoing breath is synonymous with death; the incoming breath is synonymous with life. So with each breath you are dying and being reborn. The gap between the two is of a very short duration, but keen, sincere observation and attention will make you feel the gap. If you can feel the gap, Shiva says, THE BENEFICENCE. Then nothing else is needed. You are blessed, you have known; the thing has happened.

You are not to train the breath. Leave it just as it is. Why such a simple technique? It looks so simple. Such a simple technique to know the truth? To know the truth means to know that which is neither born nor dies, to know that eternal element which is always. You can know the breath going out, you can know the breath coming in, but you never know the gap between the two.

Try it. Suddenly you will get the point -- and you can get it; it is already there. Nothing is to be added to you or to your structure, it is already there. Everything is already there except a certain awareness. So how to do this? First, become aware of the breath coming in. Watch it. Forget everything, just watch breath coming in -- the very passage.

When the breath touches your nostrils, feel it there. Then let the breath move in. Move with the breath fully consciously. When you are going down, down, down with the breath, do not miss the breath. Do not go ahead and do not follow behind, just go with it. Remember this: do not go ahead, do not follow it like a shadow; be simultaneous with it.

Breath and consciousness should become one. The breath goes in -- you go in. Only then will it be possible to get the point which is between two breaths. It will not be easy. Move in with the breath, then move out with the breath: in-out, in-out.
Buddha tried particularly to use this method, so this method has become a Buddhist method. In Buddhist terminology it is known as Anapanasati Yoga. And Buddha's enlightenment was based on this technique -- only this.

All the religions of the world, all the seers of the world, have reached through some technique or other, and all those techniques will be in these one hundred and twelve techniques. This first one is a Buddhist technique. It has become known in the world as a Buddhist technique because Buddha attained his enlightenment through this technique.

Buddha said, "Be aware of your breath as it is coming in, going out -- coming in, going out." He never mentions the gap because there is no need. Buddha thought and felt that if you become concerned with the gap, the gap between two breaths, that concern may disturb your awareness. So he simply said, "Be aware. When the breath is going in move with it, and when the breath is going out move with it. Do simply this: going in, going out, with the breath." He never says anything about the latter part of the technique.

The reason is that Buddha was talking with very ordinary men, and even that might create a desire to attain the interval. That desire to attain the interval will become a barrier to awareness, because if you are desiring to get to the interval you will move ahead. Breath will be coming in, and you will move ahead because you are interested in the gap which is going to be in the future. Buddha never mentions it, so Buddha's technique is just half.

But the other half follows automatically. If you go on practicing breath consciousness, breath awareness, suddenly, one day, without knowing, you will come to the interval. Because as your awareness will become keen and deep and intense, as your awareness will become bracketed -- the whole world is bracketed out; only your breath coming in or going out is your world, the whole arena for your consciousness -- suddenly you are bound to feel the gap in which there is no breath.

When you are moving with breath minutely, when there is no breath, how can you remain unaware? You will suddenly become aware that there is no breath, and the moment will come when you will feel that the breath is neither going out nor coming in. The breath has stopped completely. In that stopping, THE BENEFICENCE.

This one technique is enough for millions. The whole of Asia tried and lived with this technique for centuries. Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Ceylon -- the whole of Asia except India has tried this technique. Only one technique and thousands and thousands have attained enlightenment through it. And this is only the first technique.

But unfortunately, because the technique became associated with Buddha's name, Hindus have been trying to avoid it. Because it became more and more known as a Buddhist method, Hindus have completely forgotten it. And not only that, they have also tried to avoid it for another reason. Because this technique is the first technique mentioned by Shiva, many Buddhists have claimed that this book, VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, is a Buddhist book, not a Hindu book.

It is neither Hindu nor Buddhist -- a technique is just a technique. Buddha used it, but it was there already to be used. Buddha became a buddha, an enlightened one, because of the technique. The technique preceded Buddha; the technique was already there.

Try it. It is one of the most simple techniques -- simple compared to other techniques; I am not saying simple for you. Other techniques will be more difficult. That is why it is mentioned as the first technique.

The second technique -- all these nine techniques are concerned with breath.
AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN -- THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.

It is the same, but with a slight difference. The emphasis is now not on the gap, but on the turning. The outgoing and ingoing breath make a circle. Remember, these are not two parallel lines. We always think of them as two parallel lines -- breath going in and breath going out. Do you think that these are two parallel lines? They are not. Breath going in is half the circle; breath going out is the other half of the circle.

So understand this: first, breathing in and out creates a circle. They are not parallel lines, because parallel lines never meet anywhere. Secondly, the breath coming in and the breath going out are not two breaths, they are one breath. The same breath which comes in, goes out, so it must have a turn inside. It must turn somewhere. There must be a point where the incoming breath becomes outgoing.

Why put such emphasis upon turning? Because, Shiva says, AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN, THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. Very simple, but he says: realize the turns and you will realize the self.

Why the turn? If you know driving you know about gears. Each time you change the gear, you have to pass through the neutral gear, which is not a gear at all. From the first gear you move to the second or from the second to the third, but always you have to move through the neutral gear. That neutral gear is a turning point. In that turning point the first gear becomes the second and the second becomes the third. When your breath goes in and turns out, it passes through the neutral gear; otherwise it cannot turn out. It passes through the neutral territory.

In that neutral territory you are neither a body nor a soul, neither physical nor mental, because the physical is a gear of your being and the mental is another gear of your being. You go on moving from gear to gear, but you must have a neutral gear where you are neither body nor mind. In that neutral gear you simply are: you are simply an existence -- pure, simple, unembodied, with no mind.

That is why there is the emphasis on the turn. Man is a machine -- a large, very complicated machine. You have many gears in your body, many gears in your mind. You are not aware of your great mechanism, but you are a great machine. And it is good that you are not aware; otherwise you could go mad. The body is such a great machine that scientists say if we had to create a factory parallel to the human body, it would require four square miles of land, and the noise would be such that one hundred square miles of land would be disturbed by it.

The body is a great mechanical device -- the greatest. You have millions and millions of cells and each cell is alive. So you are a big city of seventy million cells; there are seventy million citizens inside you, and the whole city is running very silently, smoothly. Every moment the mechanism is working. It is very complicated. These techniques will be related at many points with the mechanism of your body and the mechanism of your mind. But always the emphasis will be on those points where suddenly you are not part of the mechanism -- remember this. Suddenly you are not part of the mechanism. There are moments when you change gears.

For example, in the night when you drop into sleep you change gears, because during the day you need a different mechanism for a waking consciousness -- a different part of the mind functions. Then you drop into sleep, and that part becomes non-functioning. Another part of the mind begins to function, and there is a gap, an interval, a turning. A gear is changed. In the morning when you are again getting up, the gear is changed. You are silently sitting, and suddenly someone says something and you get angry -- you move into a different gear. That is why everything changes.

If you get angry, your breathing will suddenly change. Your breathing will become irritated, chaotic. A trembling will get into your breathing; you will feel suffocated. Your whole body would like to do something, shatter something, only then can the suffocation disappear. Your breathing will change; your blood will take a different rhythm, a different movement. Different chemicals will have to be released in the body, the whole glandular system will have to change. You become a different man when you are angry.

A car is standing... you start it. Do not put it in any gear, let it be in neutral. It will go on pulling, vibrating, trembling, but it cannot move; it will get hot. That is why, when you are angry and you cannot do something, you will get hot. The mechanism is ready to run and do something and you are not doing -- you will get hot. You are a mechanism, but, of course, not only a mechanism. You are more, but the "more" has to be found. When you get into a gear, everything changes inside. When you change the gear, there is a turning.

Shiva says,
AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN -- THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.

Be aware at the turn. But it is a very short turn; very minute observation will be needed. And we are just without any observing capacity; we cannot observe anything. If I say to you, "Observe this flower; observe this flower which I give to you," you cannot observe it. For a single moment you will see it, and then you will begin to think of something else. It may be about the flower, but it will not be THE FLOWER. You may think about the flower, about how beautiful it is -- then you have moved. Now the flower is no more in your observation, your field has changed. You may say that it is red, it is blue, it is white... then you have moved. Observation means remaining with no word, with no verbalization, with no bubbling inside -- just remaining WITH. If you can remain with a flower for three minutes, completely, with no movement of the mind, the thing will happen -- the beneficence. You will realize.

But we are not at all observers. We are not aware, we are not alert; we cannot pay attention to anything. We just go on jumping. This is part of our heritage, our monkey heritage. Our mind is just the growth of the monkey mind, so the monkey moves on. He goes on jumping from here to there. The monkey cannot sit still. That is why Buddha insisted so much on just sitting without any movement, because then the monkey mind is not allowed to go on its way.

In Japan they have a particular type of meditation which they call Zazen. The word 'zazen' in Japan means just sitting, doing nothing. No movement is allowed. One is just sitting like a statue -- dead, not moving at all. But there is no need to sit like a statue for years together. If you can observe the turn of your breath without any movement of the mind, you will enter. You will enter into yourself or into the beyond within.

Why are these turnings so important? They are important because on turning, the breath leaves you to move in a different direction. It was with you when it was coming in; it will be with you again when it goes out. But at the turning point it is not with you and you are not with it. In that moment the breath is different from you, and you are different from it: if breathing is life, then you are dead; if breathing is your body, then you are no-body; if breathing is your mind, then you are no-mind... in that moment.

I wonder whether you have observed it or not: if you stop your breath, the mind stops suddenly. If you stop your breath just now, your mind will stop suddenly; the mind cannot function. A sudden stoppage of breath and the mind stops. Why? Because they are disjoined. Only a moving breath is joined with the mind, with the body; a non-moving breath is disjoined. Then you are in the neutral gear. The car is running, the power is on, the car is making a noise -- it is ready to go forward -- but it is not in gear, so the body of the car and the mechanism of the car are not joined. The car is divided into two. It is ready to move, but the moving mechanism is not joined with it.

The same happens when breath takes a turn. You are not joined with it. In that moment you can easily become aware of who you are. What is this being? What is it to be? Who is inside this house of the body? Who is the master? Am I just the house or is there some master also? Am I just the mechanism or does something else also penetrate this mechanism? In that turning gap, Shiva says, REALIZE. He says just be aware of the turning, and you become a realized soul.

The third technique:

OR, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER.

We are divided into the center and the periphery. The body is the periphery; we know the body, we know the periphery. We know the circumference, but we do not know where the center is. When the out-breath fuses with the in-breath, when they become one, when you cannot say whether it is the out-breath or the in-breath... when it is difficult to demarcate and define whether the breath is going out or coming in, when the breath has penetrated in and starts moving out, there is a moment of fusion. It is neither going out nor moving in. The breath is static. When it is moving out it is dynamic; when it is coming in it is dynamic.

When it is neither, when it is silent, non-moving, you are near to the center. The fusion point of the in and outgoing breath is your center.

Look at it in this way: when the breath goes in, where does it go? It goes to your center, it touches your center. When it goes out, from where does it go out? It moves from your center. Your center has to be touched. That is why Taoist mystics and Zen mystics say that the head is not the center, the navel is your center. The breath goes to the navel, then it moves out. It goes to the center.

As I said, it is a bridge between you and your body. You know the body, but you do not know where your center is. The breath is constantly going to the center and moving out, but we are not taking enough breath. Thus, ordinarily it does not really go to the center -- now, at least, it is not going to the center. That is why everyone feels "off-center." In the whole modern world, those who can think at all feel they are missing their center.

Look at a child sleeping, observe his breath. The breath goes in; the abdomen comes up. The chest remains unaffected. That is
why children have no chests, only abdomens -- very dynamic abdomens. The breath goes in and the abdomen comes up; the breath goes out and the abdomen goes down... the abdomen moves. Children are in their center, at their center. That is why they are so happy, so bliss-filled, so energy-filled, never tired -- overflowing, and always in the present moment with no past, no future.
A child can be angry. When he is angry, he is totally angry; he becomes the anger. Then his anger is also a beautiful thing.

When one is totally angry, anger has a beauty of its own, because totality always has beauty.
You cannot be angry and beautiful, you will become ugly, because partiality is always ugly. And not only with anger. When you love you are ugly because you are again partial, fragmentary; you are not total. Look at your face when you are loving someone, making love. Make love before a mirror and look at your face -- it will be ugly, animal-like. In love also your face becomes ugly. Why? Love is also a conflict, you are withholding something. You are giving very miserly. Even in your love you are not total; you do not give completely, wholly.

A child even in anger and violence is total. His face becomes radiant and beautiful; he is here and now. His anger is not something concerned with the past or something concerned with the future, he is not calculating, he is just angry. The child is at his center. When you are at your center you are always total. Whatsoever you do will be a total act; good or bad, it will be total. When you are fragmentary, when you are off-center, your every act is bound to be a fragment of yourself. Your totality is not responding, just a part, and the part is going against the whole -- -that creates ugliness.

We all were children. Why is it that as we grow our breathing becomes shallow? It never goes to the abdomen; it never touches the navel. If it could go down more and more it would become less and less shallow, but it just touches the chest and goes out. It never goes to the center. You are afraid of the center, because if you go to the center you will become total. If you want to be fragmentary, this is the mechanism to be fragmentary.

You love -- if you breathe from the center, you will flow in it totally. You are afraid. You are afraid to be so vulnerable, so open to someone, to anyone. You may call him your lover, you may call her your beloved, but you are afraid. The other is there. If you are totally vulnerable, open, you do not know what is going to happen. Then YOU ARE completely, in another sense. You are afraid to be so completely given to someone. You cannot breathe; you cannot take a deep breath. You cannot relax your breathing so that it goes to the center -- because the moment breathing goes to the center your act becomes total.

Because you are afraid of being total, you breathe shallowly. You breathe just at the minimum, not at the maximum. That is why life seems so lifeless. If you are breathing at the minimum, life will become lifeless; you are living at the minimum, not at the maximum. You can live at the maximum -- then life is an overflowing. But then there will be difficulty. You cannot be a husband, you cannot be a wife, if life is overflowing. Everything will become difficult.

If life is overflowing, love will be overflowing. Then you cannot stick to one. Then you will be flowing all over; all dimensions will be filled by you. And then the mind feels danger, so it is better not to be alive. The more you are dead, the more you are secure. The more you are dead, the more everything is in control. You can control; then you remain the master. You feel that you are the master because you can control. You can control your anger, you can control your love, you can control everything. But this controlling is possible only at the minimum level of your energy.

Everyone must have felt at some time or other that there are moments when he suddenly changes from the minimum level to the maximum. You go out to a hill station. Suddenly you are out of the city and the prison of it. You feel free. The sky is vast, and the forest is green, and the height touches the clouds. Suddenly you take a deep breath. You may not have observed it.
Now if you go to a hill station, observe. It is not really the hill station that makes the change. It is your breathing. You take a deep breath. You say, "Ah! Ah!" You touch the center, you become total for a moment, and everything is bliss. That bliss is not coming from the hill station, that bliss is coming from your center -- you have touched it suddenly.

You were afraid in the city. Everywhere there were others present and you were controlling. You could not scream, you could not laugh. What a misfortune! You could not sing on the street and dance. You were afraid -- a policeman was somewhere around the corner, or the priest or the judge or the politician or the moralist. Someone was just around the corner, so you could not just dance in the street.

Bertrand Russell has said somewhere, "I love civilization, but we have achieved civilization at a very great cost." You cannot dance in the streets, but you go to a hill station and suddenly you can dance. You are alone with the sky, and the sky is not an imprisonment. It is just opening, opening and opening -- vast, infinite. Suddenly you take a breath deeply, it touches the center and the bliss. But it is not so for long. Within an hour or two, the hill station will disappear. You may be there, but the hill station will disappear.

Your worries will come back. You will begin to think to make a call to the city, to write a letter to your wife, or you will begin to think that since after three days you are going back you should make arrangements. You have just reached and you are making arrangements to leave. You are back.

That breath was not from you really; it suddenly happened. Because of the change of situation the gear changed. You were in a new situation, you could not breathe in the old way, so for a moment a new breath came in. It touched the center, and you felt the bliss.

Shiva says you are every moment touching the center, or if you are not touching you CAN touch it. Take deep, slow breaths. Touch the center; do not breathe from the chest -- that is a trick. Civilization, education, morality, they have created shallow breathing. It will be good to go deep into the center, because otherwise you cannot take deep breaths.

Unless humanity becomes non-suppressive toward sex, man cannot breathe really. If the breath goes deep down to the abdomen, it gives energy to the sex center. It touches the sex center; it massages the sex center from within. The sex center becomes more active, more alive. Civilization is afraid of sex. We do not allow our children to touch their sex centers, their sex organs. We say, "Stop! Don't touch!"

Look at a child when he first touches his sex center, and then say "Stop!" and then observe his breathing. When you say "Stop! Don't touch your sex center!" the breath will become shallow immediately -- because it is not only his hand which is touching the sex center, deep down the breath is touching it. And if the breath goes on touching it, it is difficult to stop the hand. If the hand stops, then basically it is necessary, required, that the breath should not touch, should not go deep. It must remain shallow.

We are afraid of sex. The lower part of the body is not only lower physically, it has become lower as a value. It is condemned as "lower." So do not go deep, just remain shallow. It is unfortunate that we can only breathe downwards. If some preachers were allowed, they would change the whole mechanism. They would only allow you to breathe upward into the head. Then you would absolutely not feel sex.

If we are to create a sexless humanity, then we will have to change the breathing system. The breath must go into the head, to the SAHASRAR -- the seventh center in the head -- then come back to the mouth. This should be the passage: from the mouth to the sahasrar. It must not go deep down because down is dangerous. The deeper you go, the nearer you reach to the deeper layers of biology. You reach to the center, and that center is just near the sex center -- just near. It has to be, because sex is life.

Look at it in this way: breath is life from above downwards; sex is life from just the other corner -- from down upwards. Sex energy is flowing and breath energy is flowing. The breath passage is in the upper body and the sex passage is in the lower body. When they meet they create life; when they meet they create biology, bio-energy. So if you are afraid of sex, create a distance between the two, do not allow them to meet. So really, civilized man is a castrated man; that is why we do not know about breath, and this sutra will be difficult to understand.

Shiva says, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. He uses very contradictory terms: "energy-less, energy-filled." It is energy-less because your bodies, your minds, cannot give any energy to it. Your body energy is not there, your mind energy is not there, so it is energy-less as far as you know your identity. But it is energy-filled because it has the cosmic source of energy, not because of your body energy.

Your body energy is just fuel energy. It is nothing but petrol. You eat something, you drink something -- it creates energy. It is just giving fuel to the body. Stop eating and drinking and your body will fall dead. Not just now, it will take three months at least, because you have reservoirs of petrol. You have accumulated much energy; it can run for at least three months without going to any petrol station. It can run; it has a reservoir. For an emergency, any emergency, you may need it.

This is "fuel" energy. The center is not getting any fuel energy. That is why Shiva says it is energy-less. It is not dependent on your eating and drinking. It is connected with the cosmic source; it is cosmic energy. That is why he says ENERGY- LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. The moment you can feel the center from where breath goes out or comes in, the very point where the breaths fuse -- that center -- if you become aware of it, then enlightenment.

The fourth technique:

OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN (DOWN) AND STOPPED -- IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE'S SMALL SELF VANISHES. THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE. But then it is difficult for everyone because, he says, THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE. But who is the pure one? It is difficult for you; you cannot practice it. But you can feel it sometimes suddenly. You are driving a car and suddenly you feel there is going to be an accident. Breathing will stop. If it is out, it will remain out. If it is in, it will remain in. You cannot breathe in such an emergency; you cannot afford it. Everything stops, departs.

OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN (DOWN) AND STOPPED -- IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE'S SMALL SELF VANISHES: Your small self is only a daily utility. In emergencies you cannot remember it. Who you are -- the name, the bank balance, the prestige, everything -- just evaporates. Your car is just heading toward another car; another moment and there will be death. In this moment there will be a pause. Even for the impure there will be a pause. Suddenly breathing stops. If you can be aware in that moment, you can reach the goal.

Zen monks have tried this method very much in Japan. That is why their methods seem very weird, absurd, strange. They have done many inconceivable things. A master will throw someone out of the house. Suddenly the master will begin slapping the disciple without any rhyme or reason, without any cause.

You were sitting with your master and everything was okay. You were just chit-chatting, and he will begin to beat you in order to create the pause. If there is any cause the pause cannot be created. If you had abused the master and he starts beating you there is a causality, your mind understands: "I abused him, and he is beating me."

Really, your mind was expecting it already, so there is no gap. But remember, a Zen master will not beat you if you abuse him, he will laugh, because then laughter can create the pause. You were abusing him and you were saying nonsense things to him, and you expected anger. But he starts laughing or dancing. That is sudden; that will create the pause. You cannot understand it. If you cannot understand the mind stops, and when the mind stops, breathing stops. Either way -- if breathing stops, mind stops; if mind stops, breathing stops.

You were appreciating the master and you were feeling good, and you were thinking, "Now the master must be pleased." And suddenly he takes his staff and begins to beat you -- and mercilessly, because Zen masters are merciless. He begins to beat you; you cannot understand what is happening. The mind stops, there is a pause. If you know the technique, you can attain to your self.

There are many stories that someone attained buddhahood because the teacher suddenly started beating him. You cannot understand it -- what nonsense! How can one attain buddhahood by being beaten by someone, or by being thrown out of the window by someone? Even if someone kills you, you cannot attain buddhahood. But if you understand this technique, then it becomes easy to understand.

In the West particularly, in the last thirty or forty years Zen has become very much prevalent -- a fashion. But unless they know this technique, they cannot understand Zen. They can imitate it, but imitation is of no use. Rather, it is dangerous. These are not things to be imitated.

The whole Zen technique is based on the fourth technique of Shiva. But this is unfortunate. Now we will have to import Zen from Japan because we have lost the whole tradition; we do not know it. Shiva was the expert par excellence of this method. When he came to marry Devi with his BARAT, his procession, the whole city must have felt the pause... the whole city!

Devi's father was not willing to marry his girl to this "hippie" -- Shiva was the original hippie. Devi's father was totally against him, and no father would permit this marriage. So we cannot say anything against Devi's father. No father would permit his daughter's marriage to Shiva. But Devi insisted so he had to agree -- unwillingly, unhappily, but he agreed.

Then came the marriage procession. It is said that people began to run, seeing Shiva and his procession. The whole barat must have taken LSD, marijuana. They were "high." And really, LSD and marijuana are just the beginning. Shiva knew and his friends and disciples knew the ultimate psychedelic -- SOMA RASA. Aldous Huxley has named the ultimate psychedelic "soma" only because of Shiva. They were high, just dancing, screaming, laughing. The whole city fled. It must have felt the pause.

Any sudden, unexpected, unbelievable thing can create the pause for the impure. But for the pure there is no need of such things. For the pure, the pause is always there. Many times, for pure minds, breathing stops. If your mind is pure -- pure means you are not desiring, hankering, seeking anything -- silently pure, innocently pure, you can be sitting and suddenly your breath will stop.

Remember this: mind movement needs breath movement. Mind moving fast needs fast movement in breath. That is why when you are in anger, breath will move fast. In the sex act, the breath will move very fast. That is why in Ayurveda- a system of herbal medicine in India- it is said that your life will be shortened if too much sex is allowed. Your life will he shortened, according to Ayurveda, because Ayurveda measures your life in breaths. If your breathing is too fast, your life will be shortened.

Modern medicine says that sex helps blood circulation, sex helps relaxation. And those who suppress their sex may get into trouble -- particularly heart trouble. They are right and Ayurveda is also right, but they seem contradictory. But Ayurveda was invented five thousand years before. Every man was doing much labor: life was labor, so there was no need to relax, there was no need to create artificial devices for blood circulation.

But now, for those who are not doing much physical labor, sex is their only labor. That is why modern medicine is also right for modern man. He is not doing any physical exertion, so sex gives the exertion: the heart beats more, the blood circulates faster, the breathing becomes deep and goes to the center. So after the sex act you feel relaxed and you can fall into sleep easily.

Freud says that sex is the best tranquillizer, and it is -- at least for modern man.

In sex breathing will become fast; in anger breathing will become fast. In sex the mind is filled with desire, lust, impurity.

When the mind is pure -- no desire in the mind, no seeking, no motivation; you are not going anywhere, but just remaining here and now as an innocent pool... not even a ripple -- then breathing stops automatically. There is no need for it.

On this path, the small self vanishes and you attain to the higher self, the supreme self.

I think this will do for today.

5Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #4 周六 1月 21, 2012 10:51 am

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
Chapter #4


Chapter title: The deceptions of the mind

4 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210045
ShortTitle: VBT104
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 95 mins

Question 1

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT BY SIMPLY BECOMING AWARE AT A PARTICULAR POINT IN THE BREATHING PROCESS ONE CAN ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT? HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO BECOME FREE FROM THE UNCONSCIOUS BY JUST BEING AWARE OF SUCH A SMALL AND MOMENTARY GAP IN THE BREATHING?

This question is significant, and this question is likely to have occurred to many minds, so many things have to be understood.

First, it is thought that spirituality is a difficult attainment. It is neither: that is, it is neither difficult nor an attainment. Whatsoever you are, you are already spiritual. Nothing new is to be added to your being, and nothing is to be discarded from your being; you are as perfect as possible. It is not that you are going to be perfect sometime in the future, it is not that you have to do something arduous to be yourself. It is not a journey to some other point somewhere else; you are not going somewhere else. You are already there. That which is to be attained is already attained. This idea must go deep, only then will you be able to understand why such simple techniques can help.

If spirituality is some attainment, then of course it is going to be difficult -- not only difficult, but really impossible. If you are not already spiritual, you cannot be, you never can be, because how can one who is not spiritual be spiritual? If you are not divine already then there is no possibility, there is no way. And no matter what effort you will make, effort made by one who is not already divine cannot create divinity. If you are not divine, your effort cannot create divinity. Then it is impossible.

But the whole situation is totally opposite: you are already that which you want to attain. The end of longing is already there, present in you. Here and now, this very moment, you are that which is known as divine. The ultimate is here; it is already the case. That is why simple techniques can help. It is not an attainment, but a discovery. It is hidden, and it is hidden in very, very small things.

The persona is just like clothes. Your body is here, hidden in clothes; in the same way your spirituality is here, hidden in certain clothes. These clothes are your personality. You can be naked just here and now, and in the same way you can be naked in your spirituality also. But you do not know what the clothes are. You do not know how you are hidden in them; you do not know how to be naked. You have been in clothes so long -- for lives and lives and lives you have been in clothes -- and you have been so identified with the clothes, that now you do not think that these are clothes. You think these clothes are you. That is the only barrier.

For example, you have some treasure, but you have forgotten or you have not yet recognized that this is a treasure, and you go on begging in the streets... you are a beggar. If someone says, "Go and look inside your house. You need not be a beggar, you can be an emperor this very moment," the beggar is bound to say, "What nonsense you are talking. How can I be an emperor this very moment? I have been begging for years and still I am a beggar, and even if I go on begging for lives together, I am not going to be an emperor. So how absurd and illogical your statement is, `You can be an emperor this very moment.'"
It is impossible. The beggar cannot believe it. Why? Because the begging mind is a long habit. But if the treasure is just hidden in the house, then from simple digging, removing the earth a little bit, the treasure will be there. And immediately he will not be a beggar again, he will become an emperor.

It is the same with spirituality: it is a hidden treasure. Nothing is to be achieved somewhere in the future. You have not yet recognized it, but it is there already in you. You are the treasure, but you go on begging.
So simple techniques can help. Digging the earth, removing a little bit, is not a big effort, and you can become an emperor immediately. You have to dig a little bit to remove the earth. And when I say remove the earth, it is not only symbolically that I am saying it. Literally your body is part of the earth, and you have become identified with the body. Remove this earth a little bit, create a hole in it, and you will come to know the treasure.

That is why this question will occur to many. Really, to everyone this question will occur: "So small a technique like this -- being aware of your breathing, being aware of the incoming breath and the outgoing breath, and then realizing the interval between the two -- is this enough?" Such a simple thing! Is this enough for enlightenment? Is this the only difference between you and Buddha, that you have not realized the gap between two breaths and Buddha has realized it -- only this much? It seems illogical. The distance is vast between a Buddha and you. The distance seems infinite. The distance between a beggar and an emperor is infinite, but the beggar can immediately become an emperor if the treasure is already hidden.

Buddha was a beggar like you; he was not a buddha always. At a particular point the beggar died, and he became the master. This is not a gradual process really; it is not that Buddha goes on accumulating and then one day he is not the beggar and he becomes the emperor. No, a beggar can never become an emperor if it is going to be an accumulation, he will remain a beggar. He may become a rich beggar, but he will remain a beggar. And a rich beggar is a bigger beggar than a poor beggar.

Suddenly, one day Buddha realizes the inner treasure. Then he is no more a beggar, he becomes a master. The distance between Gautam Siddharth and Gautam Buddha is infinite. It is the same distance that is between you and a buddha. But the treasure is hidden within you as much as it was hidden in Buddha.

Take another example.... One man is born with blind eyes, diseased eyes. For a blind man, the world is a different thing. A small operation may change the whole thing, because only the eyes have to be made all right. The moment the eyes are ready, the seer is hidden behind and he will begin to look from the eyes. The seer is already there, only windows are lacking. You are in a house with no windows. You can break a hole in the wall, and suddenly you will look out.

We are already that which we will be, which we should be, which we are to be. The future is already hidden in the present; the whole possibility is here in the seed. Only a window has to be broken, only a small surgical operation is needed. If you can understand this, that spirituality is already there, already the case, then there is no problem concerning how such a small effort can help.

Really, no big effort is needed. Only small efforts are needed, and the smaller the better. And if you work effortlessly it is still better. That is why it happens, many times it happens, that the more you try, the harder it is to attain. Your very effort, your tension, your occupiedness, your longing, your expectation, becomes the barrier. But with a very small effort, an effortless effort as they call it in Zen -- doing as if not doing -- it happens easily. The more you are mad after it, the less is the possibility, because where a needle is needed you are using a sword. The sword will not be helpful. It may be bigger, but where a needle is needed a sword will not do.

Go to a butcher -- he has very big instruments. And go to a brain surgeon: you will not find such big instruments with the brain surgeon. And if you do find them, then escape immediately! A brain surgeon is not a butcher. He needs very small instruments -- the smaller the better.

Spiritual techniques are more subtle; they are not gross. They cannot be, because the surgery is even more subtle. In the brain the surgeon is still doing something with gross matter, but when you are working on spiritual planes the surgery becomes more and more aesthetic. No gross matter is there. It becomes subtle -- that is one thing.

Secondly, the questioner asks, "If something is smaller, how can a bigger step be possible through it?" This concept is irrational, unscientific. Now science knows that the smaller the particle, the more atomic, the more explosive -- the bigger really. The smaller it is, the bigger the effect. Could you have conceived before 1945, could any imaginative poet or dreamer have conceived that two atomic explosions would wipe out completely two big cities in Japan -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Two hundred thousand people were simply wiped out of existence within seconds. And what was the explosive force used? An atom! The very smallest particle blew up two big cities. You cannot see the atom. Not only with your eyes can you not see, you cannot see by any means. The atom cannot be seen with any instrument; we can only see the effects.

So do not think that the Himalayas are bigger because they have such a big body. The Himalayas are just impotent before an atomic explosion. One small atom can wipe out the whole Himalayas. Size in gross material is not necessarily power. On the contrary, the smaller the unit, the more penetrating. The smaller the unit, the more intensely it is filled with power.
These small techniques are atomic. Those who are doing bigger things do not know atomic science. You will think that a person who is working with atoms is a small person working with small things, and a person who is working with the Himalayas will look very big. Hitler was working with great masses; Mao is working with great masses. And Einstein and Planck, they were working in their laboratories with small units of matter -- energy particles. But ultimately, before Einstein's research politicians were just impotent. They were working on a bigger canvas, but they did not know the secret of the small unit.

Moralists always work on big planes, but these are gross. The thing looks very big. They devote their whole lives to moralizing, practicing this and that, to SANYAM -- control. They go on controlling; the whole edifice looks very big.

Tantra is not concerned with this. Tantra is concerned with the atomic secrets in the human being, in the human mind, in human consciousness. And tantra has achieved atomic secrets. These methods are atomic methods. If you can attain them, their result is explosive, cosmic.

Another point is to be noted. If you can say, "How is it that with such a small, simple exercise one can become enlightened?" you are saying this without doing the exercise. If you do it, then you will not say that this is a small, simple exercise. It looks this way because within two or three sentences the whole exercise has been given.

Do you know the atomic formula? Two or three words, and the whole formula is given. And with those two or three words, those who can understand, those who can use those words, can destroy the whole earth. The formula is very small.
These too are formulas, so if you just look at the formula it will look to be a very, very small, simple thing. It is not! Try to do it. When you do it, then you will know that it is not so easy. It looks simple, but it is one of the deepest things. We will analyze the process; then you will understand.

When you take your breath in, you never feel the breath. You have never felt the breath. You will immediately deny this. You will say, "This is not right. We may not be conscious continuously, but we feel the breath." No, you do not feel the breath, you feel the passage.

Look at the sea. Waves are there; you see the waves. But those waves are created by air, wind. You do not see the wind, you see the effect on the water. When you take breath in it touches your nostril. You feel the nostril, but you never know the breath. It goes down -- you feel the passage. It comes back -- again you feel the passage. You never feel the breath, you just feel the touch and the passage.

This is not what is meant when Shiva says, BE AWARE. First you will become aware of the passage, and when you have become completely aware of the passage, only then will you begin, by and by, to be aware of the breath itself. And when you become aware of the breath, then you will be capable of being aware of the gap, the interval. It is not so easy as it looks.

For tantra, for all seeking, there are layers of awareness. If I embrace you, first you will become aware of my touch upon your body; not of my love, my love is not so gross. And ordinarily we never become aware of love. We are aware only of the body in movement. We know loving movements, we know non-loving movements -- but we have never known love itself. If I kiss you, you become aware of the touch, not of my love; that love is a very subtle thing. And unless you become aware of my love the kiss is just dead, it means nothing. If you can become aware of my love, then only can you become aware of me, because that again is a deeper layer.

The breath goes in. You feel the touch, not the breath. But you are not even aware of that touch. If something is wrong, only then do you feel it. If you have some difficulty in breathing, then you feel it; otherwise you are not aware. The first step will be to be aware of the passage where breath is felt to be touching; then your sensitivity will grow. It will take years to become so sensitive that not the touch, but the movement of breath is known. Then, says tantra, you will have known PRANA -- the vitality. And only then is there the gap where breath stops, where breath is not moving -- or the center where the breath is touching, or the fusion point, or the turning where the breath, the ingoing breath, becomes outgoing. This will become arduous; then it will not be so simple.

If you do something, if you go into this center, only then will you know how difficult it is. Buddha took six years to come to this center beyond the breath. To come to this turning, he had a long, arduous journey of six years; then it happened. Mahavir was working on it for twelve years; then it happened. But the formula is simple, and theoretically this can happen this very moment -- theoretically, remember. There is no barrier theoretically, so why should it not happen this very moment? YOU are the barrier. Except for you this can happen this very moment. The treasure is there; the method is known to you. You can dig, but you will not dig.

Even this question is a trick not to dig, because your mind says, "Such a simple thing? Don't be a fool. How can you become a buddha through such a simple thing? It is not going to be." And then you are not going to do anything, because how can this happen? Mind is tricky. If I say this is very difficult, the mind says, "This is so difficult it is beyond you." If I say this is very simple, the mind says, "This is so simple that only fools can believe in it." And mind goes on rationalizing things, always escaping from doing.

Mind creates barriers. It will become a barrier if you think this is so simple, or this is too difficult -- then what are you going to do? You cannot do a simple thing, you cannot do a difficult thing. What are you going to do? Tell me! If you want to do a difficult thing, I will make it difficult. If you are going to do a simple thing, I will make it simple. It is both -- it depends on how it is interpreted. But one thing is needed, that you are going to DO. If you are not going to do then the mind will always give you explanations.

Theoretically, it is possible here and now; there is no actual barrier. But there are barriers. They may not be actual, they may simply be psychological -- they may just be your illusions -- but they are there. If I say to you, "Do not be afraid -- go! The thing that you are thinking is a snake is not a snake, it is just a rope," still the fear will be there. To you it appears to be a snake.

So whatsoever I say is not going to help. You are trembling; you want to escape and run away. I say it is just a rope, but your mind will say, "This man may be in conspiracy with the snake. There must be something wrong. This man is forcing me toward the snake. He may be interested in my death, or something else." If I try to convince you too much that this is a rope, that will only show that I am somehow interested in forcing you toward the snake. If I say to you that theoretically it is possible to see the rope as a rope this very moment, your mind will create many, many problems.

In reality there is no dilemma; in reality there is no problem. There never has been, there never will be. In mind there are problems, and you look at reality through the mind; thus, the reality becomes problematic. Your mind works like a prison. It divides and creates problems. And not only that, it creates solutions which become deeper problems, because in fact there are no problems to be solved. Reality is absolutely unproblematic; there is no problem. But you cannot see anything without problems. Wherever you look, you create problems. Your "look" is problematic. I told you this breath technique; now the mind says, "This is so simple." Why? Why does the mind say this is so simple ?

When for the first time the steam engine was invented, no one believed it. It looked so simple -- unbelievable. Just the same steam that you know in your kitchen, in your kettle, the steam running an engine, running hundreds and hundreds of passengers and such a load? The same steam that you are so well-acquainted with? This is not believable.

Do you know what happened in England? When the first train started, no one was ready to sit in it -- no one! Many people were persuaded, bribed, they were given money to sit in the train, but at the last point they escaped. They said, "Firstly, steam cannot do such miracles. Such a simple thing as steam cannot do such miracles. And if the engine starts, that means that the devil is at work somewhere. The devil is running the thing, it is not the steam. And what is the guarantee that once the thing starts you will be capable of stopping it?"

No guarantee could be given because this was the first train. Never had it stopped before, it was only probable. There was no experience, so science could not say, "Yes it will stop." Theoretically it will stop... but the people were not interested in theories. They were interested if there was any actual experience of stopping a train: "If it never stops then what will happen to us who will be sitting in it?"

So twelve criminals from the jail were brought as passengers. Anyhow they were going to die, anyhow they were sentenced to death, so there was no problem if the train was not going to stop. Then the mad driver who thought that it was going to stop, the scientist who had invented it and these twelve passengers who were anyhow going to be killed, they alone would all be killed. "Such a simple thing as steam," they said at that time. But now no one says this, because now it is working and you know it.

Everything is simple -- reality is simple. It seems complex only because of ignorance; otherwise everything is simple. Once you know it, it becomes simple. The knowing is bound to be difficult not because of reality, remember, but because of your mind. This technique is simple, but it is not going to be simple for you. Your mind will create difficulty. So try with it.

Another friend says, IF I TRY THIS METHOD OF BEING AWARE OF MY BREATHING, IF I PAY ATTENTION TO MY BREATHING, THEN I CANNOT DO ANYTHING ELSE, THE WHOLE ATTENTION GOES TO IT. AND IF I AM TO DO ANYTHING ELSE THEN I CANNOT BE AWARE OF MY BREATHING.

This will happen, so in the beginning choose a particular period in the morning, or in the evening, or at any time. For one hour just do the exercise; do not do anything else. Just do the exercise. Once you become attuned to it, then it will not be a problem. You can walk on the street and you can be aware.

Between `awareness' and `attention' there is a difference. When you pay attention to anything it is exclusive; you have to withdraw your attention from everywhere else. So it is a tension really. That is why it is called attention. You pay attention to one thing at the cost of everything else. If you pay attention to your breathing, you cannot pay attention to your walking or to your driving. Do not try it while you are driving because you cannot pay attention to both.

Attention means one thing exclusively. Awareness is a very different thing; it is not exclusive. It is not paying attention, it is being attentive; it is just being conscious. You are conscious when you are inclusively conscious. Your breathing is in your consciousness. You are walking and someone is passing, and you are also conscious of him. Someone is making noise on the road, some train passes by, some airplane flies by -- everything is included. Awareness is inclusive, attention exclusive. But in the beginning it will be attention.

So first try in selected periods. For one hour just be attentive to your breathing. By and by you will be able to change your attention into awareness. Then do simple things -- for example, walking, walk attentively with full awareness of walking and also of breathing. Do not create any opposition between the two actions of walking and breathing. Be a watcher of both. It is not difficult.

Look! For example, I can pay attention to one face here. If I pay attention to one face, all the faces will not be here for me. If I pay my attention to one face, then all the rest are bracketed out. If I pay attention only to the nose on that face, then the whole face, the remaining face, is bracketed out. I can go on narrowing down my attention to a single point.

The reverse is also possible. I pay attention to the whole face; then eyes and nose and everything are there. Then I have made my focus wider. I look at you not as individuals, but as a group. Then the whole group is in my attention. If I take you as different from the noise that is going on the street, then I am bracketing out the street. But I can look at you and the street as one whole. Then I can be aware of both you and the street. I can be aware of the whole cosmos. It depends on your focus -- on its becoming greater and greater. But first start from attention and remember that you have to grow into awareness. So choose a small period. The morning is good because you are fresh, energies are vital, everything is rising; you are more alive in the morning.

Physiologists say that not only are you more alive, but your height is a little more in the morning than in the evening. If you are six feet tall, then in the morning you are six feet and one half inch and in the evening you go back to six feet. Half an inch is lost because your spine settles down when it is tired. So in the morning you are fresh, young, alive with energy.
Do this: do not make meditation the last thing on your schedule. Make it the first. Then when you feel that now it is not an effort, when you can sit for an hour together completely immersed in breathing -- aware, attentive -- when you only know this, that you have achieved attention of breathing without any effort; when you are relaxed and enjoying it without any forcing, then you have attained it.

Then add something else -- for example, walking. Remember both; then go on adding things. After a certain period you will be capable of being aware of your breath continuously, even in sleep. And unless you are aware even in sleep you will not be able to know the depth. But this comes, by and by this comes.

One has to be patient and one has to start rightly. Know this, because the cunning mind will always try to give you a wrong start. Then you can leave it after two or three days and say, "This is hopeless." The mind will give you a wrong start. So always remember to begin rightly, because rightly begun means half done. But we start wrongly.

You know very well that attention is a difficult thing. This is because you are totally asleep. So if you start being attentive to breathing while you are doing something else, you cannot do it. And you are not going to leave the task, you will leave the effort of being attentive to breathing.
So do not create unnecessary problems for yourself. In twenty-four hours you can find a small corner. Forty minutes will do... so do the technique there. But the mind will give many excuses. The mind will say, "Where is the time? There is already too much work to be done. Where is the time?" Or the mind will say, "It is not possible now, so postpone it. Sometime in the future when things are better, then you will do it." Beware of what your mind says to you. Do not be too trusting of the mind. And we are never doubtful. We can doubt everyone but we never doubt our own minds.

Even those who talk so much of skepticism, of doubt, of reason, even they never doubt their own minds. And your mind has brought you to the state you are in. If you are in a hell, your mind has brought you to this hell, and you never doubt this guide. You can doubt any teacher, any master, but you never doubt your mind. With unflinching faith, you move with your mind as the guru. And your mind has brought you to the mess, to the misery that you are. If you are going to doubt anything, doubt first your own mind. And whenever your mind says something, think twice.

Is it true that you do not have any time? Really? You do not have any time to meditate -- to give one hour to meditation? Think twice. Ask again and again to the mind, "Is this the case, that I do not have any time?"

I don't see it. I have not seen a man who does not have more than enough time. I go on seeing people who are playing cards, and they say, "We are killing time." They are going to the movies and they say, "What to do?" They are killing time, gossiping, reading the same newspaper again and again, talking about the same things they have been talking about for their whole lives, and they say, "We don't have any time." For unnecessary things they have enough time. Why?

With an unnecessary thing mind is not in any danger. The moment you think of meditation, mind becomes alert. Now you are moving in a dangerous dimension, because meditation means the death of the mind. If you move into meditation, sooner or later your mind will have to dissolve, retire completely. The mind becomes alert and it begins to say many things to you: "Where is the time? And even if there is time, then more important things are to be done. First postpone it until later. You can meditate at any time. Money is more important. Gather money first, then meditate at your leisure. How can you meditate without money? So pay attention to money, then meditate later on."

Meditation can be postponed easily, you feel, because it is not concerned with your immediate survival. Bread cannot be postponed -- you will die. Money cannot be postponed -- it is needed for your basic necessities. Meditation can be postponed, you can survive without it. Really, you can survive without it easily.

The moment you go deep in meditation, you will not survive on this earth at least -- you will disappear. From the circle of this life, this wheel, you will disappear. Meditation is like death, so the mind becomes afraid. Meditation is like love, so the mind becomes afraid. "Postpone," it says, and you can go on postponing ad infinitum. Your mind is always saying things like this. And do not think I am talking about others. I am talking particularly about YOU.

I have come across many intelligent people who go on saying very unintelligent things about meditation. One man came from Delhi; he is a big government official. He came only for the purpose of learning meditation here. He had come from Delhi, and he stayed seven days here. I told him to go to the morning meditation class on Chowpatty beach in Bombay, but he said, "But that is difficult. I cannot get up so early." And he will never think over what his mind has told him. Is this so difficult? Now you will know: the exercise can be simple, but your mind is not so simple. The mind says, "How can I get up in the morning at six o'clock?"

I was in a big city, and the collector of that city came to meet me at eleven o'clock at night. I was just going to my bed, and he came and said, "No! It is urgent. I am very disturbed. It is a question of life and death," he told me. "So please give me at least half an hour. Teach me meditation; otherwise I might commit suicide. I am very much disturbed, and I am so frustrated that something must happen in my inner world. My outer world is lost completely."

I told him, "Come in the morning at five o'clock." He said, "That is not possible." It is a question of life and death, but he cannot get up at five o'clock. He said, "That is not possible. I never get up so early."
Okay," I told him, "Then come at ten."

He said, "That will also be difficult because by ten-thirty I am to be present at my office."
He cannot take one day's leave, and it is a question of life and death. So I told him, "Is it a question of your life and death or my life and death? Whose?" And he was not an unintelligent man, he was intelligent enough. These tricks were very intelligent.
So do not think that your mind is not playing the same tricks. It is very intelligent, and because you think it is your mind you never doubt it. It is not yours, it is just a social product. It is not yours! It has been given to you, it has been forced upon you. You have been taught and conditioned in a certain way. From the very childhood your mind has been created by others -- parents, society, teachers. The past is creating your mind, influencing your mind. The dead past is forcing itself upon the living continuously. The teachers are just the agents -- agents of the dead against the living. They go on forcing things upon your mind. But the mind is so intimate with you, the gap is so small, that you become identified with it.

You say, "I am a Hindu." Think again, reconsider it. YOU are not a Hindu. You have been given a Hindu mind. You were born just a simple, innocent being -- not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan. But you were given a Mohammedan mind, a Hindu mind. You were forced, encaged, imprisoned in a particular condition, and then life goes on adding to this mind and this mind becomes heavy -- heavy on you. You cannot do anything; the mind starts forcing its own way upon you. Your experiences are being added to the mind.

Constantly, your past is conditioning your every present moment. If I say something to you, you are not going to think about it in a fresh way, in an open way. Your old mind, your past will come in between, will begin to talk and chatter for or against.
Remember, your mind is not yours, your body is not yours; it comes from your parents. Your mind is also not yours; it also comes from your parents. Who are you?

Either one is identified with the body or with the mind. You think you are young, you think you are old, you think you are a Hindu, you think you are a Jain, you are a Parsee. You are not! You were born as a pure consciousness. These are all imprisonments. These techniques which look so simple to you will not be so simple, because this mind will create constantly many, many complexities and problems.

Just a few days before, a man came to me and he said, "I am trying your method of meditation, but tell me, in what scripture is it given? If you can convince me that it is given in my religious scripture, then it will be easier for me to do." But why will it be easier for him to do if it is written in a scripture? Because then the mind will not create a problem. The mind will say, "Okay! This belongs to us, so do it." If it is not written in any scripture then the mind will say, "What are you doing?" The mind goes against it.

I said to the man, "You have been doing this method for three months. How are you feeling?" He said, "Wonderful. I am feeling very wonderful. But tell me... give some authority from the scriptures." His own feeling is not an authority at all. He says, "I am feeling wonderful. I have become more silent, more peaceful, more loving. I am feeling wonderful." But his own experience is not the authority. The mind asks for an authority from the past.

I told him, "It is not written anywhere in your scriptures. Rather, many things which are against this technique are written." His face became sad. And then he said, "Then it will be difficult for me to do it and to continue it."
Why is his own experience not of any value?

The past -- the conditioning, the mind -- is constantly molding you and destroying your present. So remember, and be aware. Be skeptical and doubting about your mind. Do not trust it. If you can attain to this maturity of not trusting your mind, only then will these techniques be really simple, helpful, functioning. They will work miracles -- they can work miracles.
These techniques, these methods cannot be understood intellectually at all. I am trying the impossible, but then why am I trying? If they cannot be understood intellectually, then why am I talking to you? They cannot be understood intellectually, but there is no other way to make you aware of certain techniques which can change your life totally. You can understand only intellect, and this is a problem. You cannot understand anything else; you can understand only the intellect. And these techniques cannot be understood intellectually, so how to communicate?

Either you should become capable of understanding without intellect being brought in, or some method should be found so that these techniques can be made intellectually understandable. The second is not possible, but the first is possible.

You will have to start intellectually, but do not cling to it. When I say "Do," try doing. If something begins to happen within you, then you will be capable of throwing your intellect aside and reaching toward me directly without the intellect, without any effort, without the meditator. But start doing something. We can go on talking for years and years, your mind can be stuffed with many things, but that is not going to help. Rather, it may harm you because you will begin to know many things. And if you know many things you will become confused. It is not good to know many things. It is good to know a little and to practice it. A single technique can be helpful; something done is always helpful. What is the difficulty in doing it?

Deep down somewhere there is fear. The fear is that if you do it, it may be that something stops happening -- that is the fear. It may look paradoxical, but I have been meeting so many -- so many persons -- who think they want to change. They say they need meditation, they ask for a deep transformation, but deep down they are also afraid. They are dual -- double; they have two minds. They go on asking about what to do, never doing it. Why then do they go on asking? Just to deceive themselves that they are really interested in transforming themselves. That is why they are asking.

This gives a facade, an appearance that they are really, sincerely interested in changing themselves. That is why they are asking, going to this guru and that, finding, trying, but they never do anything. Deep down they are afraid.

Eric Fromm has written a book, FEAR OF FREEDOM. The title seems contradictory. Everyone thinks that they like freedom; everyone thinks that they are endeavoring for freedom -- in this world and in "that world" also. "We want MOKSHA -- liberation -- we want to be freed from all limitations, from all slaveries. We want to be totally free," they say. But Eric Fromm says that man is afraid of freedom. We want it, we go on saying that we want it, we go on convincing ourselves that we want it, but deep down we are afraid of freedom. We do not want it! Why? Why this duality?

Freedom creates fear, and meditation is the deepest freedom possible. You are not freed only from outward limitations, you are freed from inner slavery -- the very mind, the base of slavery. You are freed from the whole past. The moment you have no mind, the past has disappeared. You have transcended history; now there is no society, no religion, no scripture, no tradition, because they all have their abode in the mind. Now there is no past, no future, because past and future are part of the mind, the memory and the imagination.

Then you are here and now in the present. Now there is not going to be any future. There will be now and now and now -- eternal now. Then you are freed completely; you transcend all tradition, all history, body, mind, everything. One becomes free of the fearful. Such freedom? Then where will YOU be? In such freedom, can you exist? In such freedom, in such vastness, can you have your small "I" -- your ego? Can you say "I am?"

You can say, "I am in bondage," because you can know your boundary. When there is no bondage there is no boundary. You become just a state, nothing more... absolute nothingness, emptiness. That creates fear, so one goes on talking about meditation, about how to do it, and one goes on without doing it.

All the questions arise out of this fear. Feel this fear. If you know it, it will disappear. If you do not know it, it will continue. Are you ready to die in the spiritual sense? Are you ready to be NOT?

Whenever anyone came to Buddha he would say, "This is the basic truth -- that you are not. And because you are not you cannot die, you cannot be born; and because you are not you cannot be in suffering, in bondage. Are you ready to accept this?" Buddha would ask, "Are you ready to accept this? If you are not ready to accept this, then do not try meditation now. First try to find out whether you really are or you are not. Meditate on this first: is there any self? Is there any substance within or are you just a combination?"

If you manage to find out, you will find that your body is a combination. Something has come from your mother, something has come from your father, and all else has come from food. This is your body. In this body you are NOT, there is no self. Contemplate on the mind: something has come from here, something from there. Mind has nothing that is original. It is just accumulation.

Find out if there is any self in the mind. If you move deep, you will find that your identity is just like an onion. You peel off one layer and another layer comes up; you peel off another layer and still another layer comes up. You go on peeling layers off, and ultimately you come to a nothingness. With all the layers thrown off, there is nothing inside. Body and mind are like onions. When you have peeled off both body and mind, then you come to encounter a nothingness, an abyss, a bottomless void. Buddha called it SHUNYA.

To encounter this shunya, to encounter this void, creates fear. That fear is there. That is why we never do meditation. We talk about it, but we never do anything about it. That fear is there. You know deep down that there is a void, but you cannot escape this fear. Whatsoever you do, the fear will remain unless you encounter it. That is the only way. Once you encounter your nothingness, once you know that within you are just like a space, shunya, then there will be no fear. Then there cannot be any fear, because this shunya, this void, cannot be destroyed. This void is not going to die. That which was going to die is no more; it was nothing but the layers of an onion.

That is why many times in deep meditation, when one comes nearer to this nothingness, one becomes afraid and starts trembling. One feels that one is going to die, one wants to escape from this nothingness back to the world. And many go back; then they never turn within again. As I see it, every one of you have tried in some life or other some meditative technique. You have been near to the nothingness, and then fear gripped you and you escaped. And deep in your past memories, that memory is there; that becomes the hindrance. Whenever you again think of trying meditation, that past memory deep down in your unconscious mind again disturbs you and says, "Go on thinking; do not do it. You have done it once."

It is difficult to find a man -- and I have looked into many -- who has not tried meditation once or twice in some life. The memory is there, but you are not conscious of it, you are not aware of where the memory is. It is there. Whenever you begin to do something that becomes a barrier, this and that begin to stop you in many ways. So if you are really interested in meditation, find out about your own fear of it. Be sincere about it: are you afraid? If you are afraid, then first something has to be done about your fear, not about meditation.

Buddha used to try many devices. Sometimes someone would say to him, "I am afraid of trying meditation." And this is a must: the master must be told that you are afraid. You cannot deceive the master... and there is no need -- it is deceiving yourself. So whenever someone would say, "I am afraid of meditation," Buddha would say, "You are fulfilling the first requirement." If you say yourself that you are afraid of meditation, then something becomes possible. Then something can be done because you have uncovered a deep thing. So what is the fear? Meditate on it. Go and dig out where it comes from, what the source is.

All fear is basically death-oriented. Whatsoever its form, mode, whatsoever its shape, name, all fear is death-oriented. If you move deep, you will find that you are afraid of death.
If someone came to Buddha and said, "I am afraid of death, I have found this out," Buddha would say, "Then go to the burning ghat, go to the cemetery, and meditate on a funeral pyre. People are dying daily -- they will be burned. Just remain there at the MARGHAT -- cemetery -- and meditate on the burning pyre. When their family members have gone, you remain there. Just look into the fire, at the burning body. When everything is becoming smoke, you just look at it deeply. Do not think, just meditate on it for three months, six months, nine months.

"When it becomes a certainty to you that death cannot be escaped, when it becomes absolutely certain that death is the way of life, that death is implied in life, that death is going to be, that there is no way out and you are already in it, only then come to me."

After meditating on death, after seeing every day, night and day, dead bodies being burned, dissolved into ashes -- just a smoke remains and then disappears -- after meditating for months together, a certainty will arise: the certainty that death is inevitable. It is the only certainty really. The only thing certain in life is death. Everything else is uncertain: it may be or it may not be. But you cannot say that it may be or it may not be for death. It is; it is going to be. It has already occurred.

The moment you entered life, you entered death. Now nothing can be done about it.

When death is certain there is no fear. Fear is always with things which can be changed. If death is to be, fear disappears. If you can change, if you can do something about death, then fear will remain. If nothing can be done, if you are already in it, then it is absolutely certain that fear will disappear. When fear of death had disappeared, Buddha would allow you to meditate.

He would say, "Now you can meditate."
So you also go deep into your mind. And listening to these techniques will be helpful only when your inner barriers are broken, when inner fears disappear and you are certain that death is the reality. So if you die in meditation there is no fear -- death is certain. Even if death occurs in meditation, there is no fear. Only then can you move -- and then you can move at rocket speed because the barriers are not there.

It is not distance that takes time, but the barriers. You can move this very moment if there is no barrier. You are already there but for the barrier. It is a hurdle race, and you go on putting up more and more hurdles. You feel good when you cross a hurdle; you feel good that now you have crossed the hurdle. And the idiocy of it, the foolishness of it, is that the hurdle was placed there by you in the first place. It was never there. You go on putting up hurdles, then jumping over them, then feeling good; then you go on putting up more hurdles, then jumping. You move in a circle and never, never reach to the center.

Mind creates hurdles because mind is afraid. It will give you many explanations as to why you are not doing meditation. Do not believe it. Go deep, find out the basic cause. Why does a person go on talking about food and yet never eat? What is the problem? The man seems mad!

Another man goes on talking about love and never loves, another man goes on talking about something else and never does anything about it. This talking becomes obsessive; it becomes a compulsion. One goes on, one sees talking as a doing. By talking you feel that you are doing something, so you feel at ease. You are doing something -- at least talking, at least reading, at least listening. This is not doing. This is deceptive; do not fall into the deception.

I will be talking here about these one hundred and twelve methods not to feed your mind, not to make you more knowledgeable, not to make you more informed. I am not trying to make you a pundit. I am talking here in order to give you a certain technique which can change your life. So whichever method appeals to you, do not start talking about it -- do it! Be silent about it and do it. Your mind will raise many questions. Just inquire deeply first before asking me. Inquire deeply first whether those questions are really significant or if your mind is just deceiving you.

Do, then ask. Then your questions become practical. And I know which question has been asked through doing and which question has been asked just through curiosity, just through intellect. So by and by I will not answer your intellectual questions at all. Do something -- then your questions become significant. These questions which say, "This exercise is a very simple one," are not asked after doing. This is NOT so simple. In the end I must repeat again:

You are already the truth.

Only a certain awakening is needed.
You are not to go anywhere else. You are to go into yourself, and the going is possible this very moment. If you can put aside your mind, you enter here and now.

These techniques are for putting your mind aside. These techniques are not really for meditation; they are for putting the mind aside. Once the mind is not there, YOU ARE!

I think this is enough for today, or even more than enough.

6Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #5 周六 1月 21, 2012 11:13 am

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
Chapter #5


Chapter title: Five techniques of attentiveness
5 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210055
ShortTitle: VBT105
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 108 mins

5. ATTENTION BETWEEN EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT.
6. WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTION BETWEEN TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS BE BORN ANEW.
7. WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF.
8. WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER.
9. LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING.


When one of the great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, reached Egypt to enter a school -- a secret esoteric school of mysticism -- he was refused. And Pythagoras was one of the best minds ever produced. He could not understand it. He applied again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing he cannot be allowed to enter the school.

Pythagoras is reported to have said, "I have come for knowledge, not for any sort of discipline." But the school authorities said, "We cannot give you knowledge unless you are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in actual experience. No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. So you will have to go on a forty-day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, with a certain awareness on certain points."

There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training. After forty days of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school. It is said that Pythagoras said, "You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. From the intellect it has come down to the heart. Now I can feel things. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life. It is not going to be a philosophy, but rather, an experience -- existential."

What was that training he went through? This fifth technique was the technique that was given to Pythagoras. It was given in Egypt, but the technique is Indian.

The fifth technique:

ATTENTION BETWEEN EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT. This was the technique given to Pythagoras. Pythagoras went with this technique to Greece, and really, he became the fountainhead, the source of all mysticism in the West. He is the father of all mysticism in the West.

This technique is one of the very deep methods. Try to understand this: ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Modern physiology, scientific research, says that between the two eyebrows is the gland which is the most mysterious part of the body. This gland, called the pineal gland, is the third eye of the Tibetans -- SHIVANETRA: the eye of the Shiva, of the tantra. Between the two eyes there exists a third eye, but it is non-functioning. It is there, it can function any moment, but it does not function naturally. You have to do something about it to open it. It is not blind; it is simply closed. This technique is to open the third eye.

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Close your eyes, then focus both of your eyes just in the middle of the two eyebrows. Focus just in the middle, with closed eyes, as if you are looking with your two eyes. Give total attention to it.
This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive. You cannot be attentive to any other part of the body so easily. This gland absorbs attention like anything. If you give attention to it, both your eyes become hypnotized with the third eye. They become fixed; they cannot move. If you are trying to be attentive to any other part of the body it is difficult. This third eye catches attention, forces attention; It is magnetic for attention. So all the methods all over the world have used it. It is the simplest to train you in attention because not only are you trying to be attentive, the gland itself helps you; it is magnetic.

Your attention is brought to it forcibly. It is absorbed.
It is said in the old tantra scriptures that for the third eye attention is food. It is hungry; it has been hungry for lives and lives. If you pay attention to it, it becomes alive. It becomes alive! The food is given to it. And once you know that attention is food, once you feel that your attention is magnetically drawn, attracted, pulled by the gland itself, attention is not a difficult thing then. One has only to know the right point. So just close your eyes, let your two eyes move just to the middle, and feel the point. When you are near the point, suddenly your eyes will become fixed. When it becomes difficult to move them, then know you have caught the right point.

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT... If this attention is there, for the first time you will come to experience a strange phenomenon. For the first time you will see thoughts running before you; you will become the witness. It is just like a film screen: thoughts are running and you are a witness. Once your attention is focused at the third eye center, you become immediately the witness of thoughts.

Ordinarily you are not the witness, you are identified with thoughts. If anger is there, you become anger. If a thought moves, you are not the witness, you become one with the thought, identified, and you move with it. You become the thought; you take the form of the thought. When sex is there you become sex, when anger is there you become anger, when greed is there you become greed. Any thought moving becomes identified with you. You do not have any gap between you and the thought.

But focused at the third eye, suddenly you become a witness. Through the third eye you become the witness. Through the third eye you can see thoughts running like clouds in the sky or people moving on the street.

You are sitting at your window looking at the sky or at people in the street; you are not identified. You are aloof, a watcher on the hill -- different. Now if anger is there you can look at it as an object. Now you do not feel that YOU are angry. You feel that you are surrounded by anger -- a cloud of anger has come around you -- but you are not the anger. And if you are not the anger, anger becomes impotent, it cannot affect you; you remain untouched. The anger will come and go and you will remain centered in yourself.

This fifth technique is a technique of finding the witness. ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS, LET THE MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. Now look at your thoughts; now encounter your thoughts. LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT. When attention is focused at the third eye center, between the two eyebrows, two things happen. One is, suddenly you become a witness.

This can happen in two ways. You become a witness and you will be centered at the third eye. Try to be a witness. Whatsoever is happening, try to be a witness. You are ill, the body is aching and painful, you have misery and suffering, whatsoever -- be a witness to it. Whatsoever is happening, do not identify yourself with it. Be a witness, an observer. Then if witnessing becomes possible, you will be focused in the third eye.

The vice versa is the case also. If you are focused in the third eye, you will become a witness. These two things are part of one. So the first thing: by being centered in the third eye there will be the arising of the witnessing self. Now you can encounter your thoughts. This will be the first thing. And the second thing will be that now you can feel the subtle, delicate vibration of breathing. Now you can feel the form of breathing, the very essence of breathing.

First try to understand what is meant by "the form," by "the essence of breathing." While you are breathing, you are not only breathing air. Science says you are breathing only air -- just oxygen, hydrogen, and other gases in their combined form of air. They say you are breathing air! But tantra says that air is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are breathing prana -- vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing prana, not only air.

Modern science is still not able to find out whether there is something like prana, but some researchers have felt something mysterious. Breathing is not simply air. It has been felt by many modern researchers also. In particular, one name is to be mentioned -- Wilhelm Reich, a German psychologist who called it "orgone energy." It is the same thing as prana. He says that while you are breathing, air is just the container and there is a mysterious content which can be called orgone or prana or ELAN VITAL. But that is very subtle. Really, it is not material. Air is the material thing -- the container is material -- but something subtle, non-material, is moving through it.

The effects of it can be felt. When you are with a very vital person, you will feel a certain vitality arising in you. If you are with a very sick person you will feel sucked, as if something has been taken out of you. When you go to the hospital, why do you feel so tired? You are being sucked from everywhere. The whole hospital atmosphere is ill, and everyone there needs more elan vital, more prana. So if you are there, suddenly your prana begins to flow out of you. Why do you feel suffocated sometimes when you are in a crowd? Because your prana is being sucked. While you are alone under the sky in the morning, under the trees, suddenly you feel a vitality in you -- the prana. Each person needs a particular space. If that space is not given, your prana is sucked.

Wilhelm Reich did many experiments, but he was thought to be a madman. Science has its own superstitions, and science is a very orthodox thing. Science cannot feel yet that there is anything more than air, but India has been experimenting with it for centuries.

You may have heard or you may have even seen someone going into SAMADHI, cosmic consciousness -- underground samadhi -- for days together, with no air penetrating. One man went into such underground samadhi in Egypt in 1880 for forty years. Those who had buried him all died, because he was to come out of his samadhi in 1920, forty years afterwards. In 1920 no one believed that they would find him alive, but he was found alive. He lived afterwards for ten years more. He had become completely pale, but he was alive. And there had been no possibility of air reaching to him.

He was asked by medical doctors and others, "What is the secret of it?" He said, "We do not know. We only know this, that prana can enter and flow anywhere." Air cannot penetrate, but prana can penetrate. Once you know that you can suck prana directly, without the container, then you can go into samadhi for centuries even.

By being focused in the third eye, suddenly you can observe the very essence of breath -- not breath, but the very essence of breath, prana. And if you can observe the essence of breath, prana, you are at the point from where the jump, the breakthrough happens.

The sutra says, LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD... And when you come to feel the essence of breathing, prana, just imagine that your head is filled with it -- just imagine. No need of any effort. I will explain to you how imagination works. When you are focused at the third eye center, imagine, and the thing happens -- then and there.

Now your imagination is just impotent; you go on imagining and nothing happens. But sometimes, unknowingly, in ordinary life also things happen. You are imagining about your friend and suddenly there is a knock on the door. You say it is a coincidence that the friend has come. Sometimes your imagination works just like coincidence. But whenever this happens, now try and remember and analyze the whole thing. Whenever it happens that you feel your imagination has become actual, go inside and observe. Somewhere your attention must have been near the third eye. Whenever this coincidence happens, it is not a coincidence. It looks that way because you do not know the secret science. Your mind must have moved unknowingly near the third eye center. If your attention is in the third eye, just imagination is enough to create any phenomenon.

This sutra says that when you are focused between the eyebrows and you can feel the very essence of breathing, LET FORM FILL. Now imagine that this essence is filling your whole head, particularly the top of the head, the SAHASRAR -- the highest psychic center. And the moment you imagine, it will be filled. THERE -- at the top of the head -- SHOWER AS LIGHT. This prana essence is showering from the top of your head as light. And it WILL begin to shower, and under the shower of light you will be refreshed, reborn, completely new. That is what inner rebirth means.

So two things: first, focused at the third eye your imagination becomes potent, powerful. That is why so much insistence has been given on purity. Before doing these practices, be pure. Purity is not a moral concept for tantra, purity is significant -- because if you are focused at the third eye and your mind is impure, your imagination can become dangerous: dangerous to you, dangerous to others. If you are thinking to murder someone, if this idea is in the mind, just imagining may kill the man. That is why there is so much insistence on being pure first.

Pythagoras was told to go through fasting, through particular breathing -- this breathing -- because here one is traveling in a very dangerous land. Because wherever there is power there is danger, and if the mind is impure, whenever you get power your impure thoughts will take hold of it immediately.

You have imagined many times to kill but the imagination cannot work, fortunately. If it works, if it is actualized immediately, then it will become dangerous -- not only to others, but to yourself also, because so many times you have thought to commit suicide. If the mind is focused at the third eye, just thinking of suicide will become suicide. You will not have any time to change, immediately it will happen.

You might have observed someone being hypnotized. When someone is hypnotized, the hypnotist can say anything and immediately the hypnotized person follows. Howsoever absurd the order, howsoever irrational or even impossible, the hypnotized person follows it. What is happening? This fifth technique is at the base of all hypnotism. Whenever someone is being hypnotized he is told to focus his eyes at a particular point -- on some light, some dot on the wall or anything, or on the eyes of the hypnotist.

When you focus your eyes at any particular point, within three minutes your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye. And the moment your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye, your face begins to change. And the hypnotist knows when your face begins to change. Suddenly your face loses all vitality. It becomes dead, as if deeply asleep. The hypnotist knows immediately when your face has lost the luster, the aliveness. It means that now attention is being sucked by the third eye center. Your face has become dead; the whole energy is running toward the third eye center.

Now the hypnotist immediately knows that anything said will happen. He says, "Now you are falling into a deep sleep" -- you will fall immediately. He says, "Now you are becoming unconscious" -- you will become unconscious immediately. Now anything can be done. If he says, "Now you have become Napoleon," you will become. You will begin to behave like a Napoleon, you will begin to talk like Napoleon. Your gestures will change. Your unconscious will take the order and will create the actuality. If you are suffering from a disease, now it can be ordered that the disease has disappeared and it will disappear. Or any new disease can be created.

Just putting an ordinary stone from the street in your hand, the hypnotist can say, "This is fire in your hand," and you will feel intense heat; your hand will get burned -- not only in the mind, but actually. Actually your skin will get burned. You will have a burning sensation. What is happening? There is no fire, there is just an ordinary stone, cold. How? How does this burning happen? You are focused at the third eye center, your imagination is being given suggestions by the hypnotist, and they are being actualized. If the hypnotist says, "Now you are dead," you will die immediately. Your heart will stop. It WILL stop.

This happens because of the third eye. In the third eye, imagination and actualization are not two things. Imagination is the fact. Imagine, and it is so. There is no gap between dream and reality. There is NO gap between dream and reality! Dream, and it will become real. That is why Shankara has said that this whole world is nothing but the dream of the divine... the DREAM of the divine! This is because the divine is centered in the third eye -- always, eternally -- so whatsoever the divine dreams becomes real. If you are also centered in the third eye, whatsoever you dream will become real.

Sariputta came to Buddha. He meditated deeply, then many things, many visions started coming, as it happens with anyone who goes into deep meditation. He began to see heavens, he began to see hells, he began to see angels, gods, demons. And they were actual, so real that he came running to Buddha to tell him that such and such a vision had come to him. But Buddha said, "It is nothing -- just dreams. Just dreams!"

But Sariputta said, "They are so real. How can I say that they are dreams? When I see a flower in my vision it is more real than any flower in the world. The fragrance is there; I can touch it. When I see you," he said to Buddha, "I do not see you as real. That flower is more real than your being here just before me, so how can I differentiate between what is real and what is dream?" Buddha said, "Now that you are centered in the third eye, dream and reality are one. Whatsoever you are dreaming will be real, and vice versa also."

For one who is centered in the third eye dreams will become real and the whole reality will become just a dream, because when your dream can become real you know there is no basic difference between dream and reality. So when Shankara says that this whole world is just MAYA, a dream of the divine, it is not a theoretical proposition, it is not a philosophical statement. It is, rather, the inner experience of one who is focused in the third eye.

When you are focused in the third eye, just imagine that the essence of prana is showering from the top of the head, just as if you are sitting under a tree and flowers are showering, or you are just under the sky and suddenly a cloud begins to shower, or you are just sitting in the morning and the sun rises and rays begin to shower. Imagine, and immediately there is a shower -- a shower of light falling down from the top of your head. This shower recreates you, gives you a new birth. You are reborn.

The sixth technique:

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW.

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS... Forget breaths -- keep attentive in between. One breath has come: before it returns, before it is exhaled out, there is the gap, the interval. One breath has gone out; before it is taken in again, the gap. IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW. But this has to be done continuously. This sixth technique has to be done continuously. That is why this is mentioned: WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY... Whatsoever you are doing, keep your attention in the gap between the two breaths. But it must be practiced while in activity.

We have discussed one technique that is just similar. Now there is only this difference, that this has to be practiced while in worldly activity. Do not practice it in isolation. This practice is to be done while you are doing something else. You are eating -- go on eating and be attentive of the gap. You are walking -- go on walking and be attentive of the gap. You are going to sleep -- lie down, let sleep come, but you go on being attentive of the gap. Why in activity? Because activity distracts the mind, activity calls for your attention again and again. Do not be distracted, be fixed at the gap. And do not stop activity, let the activity continue. You will have two layers of existence -- doing and being.

We have two layers of existence: the world of doing and the world of being; the circumference and the center. Go on working on the periphery, on the circumference; do not stop it. But go on working attentively on the center also. What will happen? Your activity will become an acting, as if you are playing a part.

You are playing a part -- for example, in a drama. You have become Ram or you have become Christ. You go on acting as Christ or as Ram, and still you remain yourself. In the center, you know who you are; on the periphery you go on acting as Ram, Christ or anyone. You know you are not Ram -- you are acting. You know who you are. Your attention is centered in you; your activity continues on the circumference.

If this method is practiced, your whole life will become a long drama. You will be an actor playing roles, but constantly centered in the gap. If you forget the gap then you are not playing roles, you have become the role. Then it is not a drama; you have mistaken it as life. That is what we have done. Everyone thinks he is living life. It is not life, it is just a role -- a part which has been given to you by the society, by the circumstances, by the culture, by the tradition, the country, the situation. You have been given a role and you are playing it; you have become identified with it. To break that identification there is this technique.

Krishna has many names. Krishna is one of the greatest actors. He is constantly centered in himself and playing -- playing many roles, many games, but absolutely non serious. Seriousness comes from identification. If you really become Ram in the drama then there are bound to be problems. Those problems will come out of your seriousness. When Sita is stolen you may get a heart attack, and the whole play will have to be stopped. If you really become Ram a heart attack is certain... even heart failure.
But you are just an actor. Sita is stolen, but nothing is stolen. You will go back to your home and you will sleep peacefully. Not even in a dream will you feel that Sita is stolen. When really Sita was stolen, Ram himself was weeping, crying and asking the trees, "Where has my Sita gone? Who has taken her?" But this is the point to understand. If Ram is really weeping and asking the trees, he has become identified. He is no more Ram; he is no more a divine person.

This is the point to remember, that for Ram his real life also was just a part. You have seen other actors playing Ram, but Ram himself was just playing a part -- on a greater stage, of course.

India has a very beautiful story about it. I think that the story is unique; nowhere else in any part of the world does such a thing exist. It is said that Valmiki wrote the RAMAYANA before Ram was born, and then Ram had to follow. So really, the first act of Ram was also just a drama. The story was written before Ram was born and then Ram had to follow, so what can he do? When a man like Valmiki writes the story, Ram has to follow. So everything was fixed in a way. Sita was to be stolen and the war had to be fought.

If you can understand this, then you can understand the theory of destiny, BHAGYA -- fate. It has a very deep meaning. And the meaning is, if you take it that everything is fixed for you, your life becomes a drama. If you are playing the role of Ram in the drama you cannot change it, everything is fixed, even your dialogue. If you say something to Sita it is just repeating something that is fixed. You cannot change it if life is taken as fixed.

For example, you are going to die on a particular day -- it is fixed. When you will be dying you will be weeping, but it is fixed. And such and such persons will be around you -- it is fixed. If everything is fixed, everything becomes a drama. If everything is fixed, it means you are just to enact it. You are not asked to live it, you are just asked to enact it.

This technique, the sixth technique, is just to make yourself a psychodrama -- just a play. You are focused in the gap between two breaths and life moves on, on the periphery. If your attention is at the center, then your attention is not really on the periphery -- that is just "sub-attention"; it just happens somewhere near your attention. You can feel it, you can know it, but it is not significant. It is as if it is not happening to you. I will repeat this: if you practice this sixth technique, your whole life will be as if it is not happening to you, as if it is happening to someone else.

The seventh technique: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. More and more you are entering deeper layers. WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD... If you have known the third eye then you know the intangible breath, the invisible prana in the center of the forehead, and then you know the showering -- the energy, the light showers. AS THIS REACHES HEART... When the shower will reach your heart... AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF.

Take this technique in three parts. One, you must be able to feel the prana in breath -- the intangible part of it, the invisible part of it, the immaterial part of it. It comes if you are attentive between the two eyebrows; then it comes easily. If you are attentive in the gap, then too it comes, but a little less easily. If you are aware of the center at your navel where breath comes and touches and goes out, it also comes, but with less ease. The easiest way to know the invisible part of breath is to be centered at the third eye. But wherever you are centered, it comes, you begin to feel the prana flowing in.

If you can feel the prana flowing in you, you can know when you are going to die. Six months before the day of your death you begin to know, if you can feel the invisible part of breath. Why do so many saints declare the day of their death? It is easy, because if you can see the content of the breath, the prana flowing into you, the moment the process reverses you can feel it. Before you die, six months before you die, the process reverses: prana begins to flow out of you. Then the breath is not taking it in. Rather, on the contrary, the breath is taking it out -- the same breath.

You cannot feel it because you do not know the invisible part -- you know only the visible, you know only the vehicle. The vehicle will be the same. Now the breath is carrying prana in, leaving it there; then the vehicle goes back empty. Then again it is filled with the prana and it comes in. So the ingoing breath and the outgoing breath are not the same, remember. The ingoing breath and the outgoing breath are the same as vehicles, but the incoming breath is filled with prana and the outgoing breath is empty. You have taken in the prana and the breath has become empty.

The reverse happens when you are nearing death. The incoming breath comes prana-less, empty, because your body cannot suck prana from the cosmos. You are going to die; there is no need for it. The whole process has reversed. And when the breath goes out, it takes your prana out. One who has been able to see the invisible can know his day of death immediately. Six months before, the process reverses.

This sutra is very, very significant: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. While you are falling into sleep this technique has to be practiced -- then only, not at any other time. While you are falling asleep, only then; that is the right moment to practice this technique. You are falling asleep. By and by, by and by, sleep is overtaking you. Within moments, your consciousness will dissolve; you will not be aware. Before that moment comes, become aware -- aware of the breath and the invisible part prana, and feel it coming to the heart.

Go on feeling that it is coming to the heart. The prana enters from your heart into the body. Go on feeling that the prana is coming into the heart, and let sleep come while you are continuously feeling it. You go on feeling, and let sleep come and drown you.

If this happens -- that you are feeling invisible breath coming into the heart and sleep overtakes you -- you will be aware in dreams. You will know that you are dreaming. Ordinarily we do not know that we are dreaming. While you dream you think that this is reality. That too happens because of the third eye. Have you seen anyone asleep? His eyes move upwards and become focused in the third eye. If you have not seen, then see.

Your child is sleeping... just open his eyes and see where his eyes are. His pupils have gone up and they are focused in the third eye. I say look at children, do not look at grown-ups -- they are not believable because their sleep is not deep. They will just be thinking that they are asleep. Look at children, their eyes move up. They become focused in the third eye. Because of this focusing in the third eye you take your dreams as real, you cannot feel they are dreams -- they are real. You will know when you get up in the morning. Then you will know that "I was dreaming." But this is the later, retrospective realization. You cannot realize in the dream that you are dreaming. If you realize it, then there are two layers: dream is there but you are awake, you are aware. For one who becomes aware in dreams, this sutra is wonderful. It says, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF.

If you can become aware of dreams, you can do two things. You can create dreams -- one. Ordinarily you cannot create dreams. How impotent man is! You cannot even create dreams. If you want to dream a particular thing you cannot dream it; it is not in your hands. How powerless man is! Even dreams cannot be created. You are just a victim of dreams, not the creator. A dream happens to you; you cannot do anything. Neither can you stop it nor can you create it.

But if you move into sleep remembering the heart being filled with prana, continuously being touched by prana with every breath, you will become a master of your dreams -- and this is a rare mastery. Then you can dream whatsoever dreams you like. Just note while you are falling asleep that "I want to dream this dream," and that dream will come to you. Just say, while falling asleep, "I do not want to dream that dream," and that dream cannot enter your mind.

But what is the use of becoming the master of your dreaming? Isn't it useless? No, it is not useless. Once you become master of your dreams you will never dream -- it is absurd. When you are master of your dreams, dreaming stops; there is no need for it. And when dreaming stops, your sleep has a different quality altogether, and the quality is the same as of death.

Death is deep sleep. If your sleep can become as deep as death, that means there will be no dreaming. Dreaming creates superficiality in sleep. You move on the surface because of the dreams; because of hanging on to the dreams, you move on the surface. When there is no dreaming you just drop into the sea, its depth is reached.

Death is the same. That is why people in India have always been saying that sleep is a short duration of death, and death is a long sleep -- qualitatively they are the same. Sleep is a day-to-day death. Death is a life-to-life phenomenon, a life-to-life sleep. Every day you are tired. You fall into sleep and you regain your vitality, your aliveness in the morning; you are reborn.

After a life of seventy or eighty years you are tired completely. Now such short durations of death won't do; you need a great death. After that great death or great sleep, you are reborn with a totally new body.
Once you can know dreamless sleep and can be aware in it, then there will be no fear of death. No one has ever died, no one can die -- that is the only impossibility.

Just a day before I was telling you that death is the only certainty, and now I say to you that death is impossible. No one has ever died and no one can die -- that is the only impossibility -- because the universe is life. You are again and again reborn, but the sleep is so deep that you forget your old identity. Your mind is washed clean of the memories.

Think of it in this way. Today you are going to sleep: it is just as if there were some mechanism -- and soon we will have this -- like that which can erase on a tape recorder, which can wipe a tape clean so that whatsoever was recorded is no more there. The same is possible with memory, because memory is really just a deep recording. Sooner or later we will have a mechanism which can be put on the head and it will clean your mind completely. In the morning you will no longer be the same person because you won't be able to remember who it was who went to sleep. Then your sleep will look like death. There will be a discontinuity; you won't be able to remember who went to sleep. This is happening naturally. When you die and you are reborn, you cannot remember who died. You start again.

With this technique, first you will become the master of your dreams -- that is, dreaming will cease. Or if you want to dream you will be able to dream, but dreaming will become voluntary. It will not be non-voluntary, it will not be forced upon you; you will not be a victim. Then the quality of your sleep will become just like that of death. Then you will know that death is sleep.
That is why this sutra says: HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. you will know that death is just a long sleep -- and helpful and beautiful because it gives you new life; it gives you everything anew. Death ceases to be... with cessation of dreaming, death ceases to be.

There is another meaning to gaining power over death, direction over death. If you can come to feel that death is just a sleep, you will be able to direct it. If you can direct your dreams, you can direct your death also. You can choose where you are to be born again, to whom, when, in what form; you will become master of your birth also.

Buddha died... I am not referring to his last life, but to his last-but-one life, before he became Buddha. Before dying he said, "I will be born to such and such parents; such will be my mother, such will be my father. But my mother will die immediately... when I am born my mother will die immediately. Before I am born my mother will have certain dreams." Not only do you gain power from your dreams, you gain power from others' dreams also. So Buddha, as an example, said, "Certain dreams will be there. When I will be in the womb, my mother will have certain dreams. So whenever any woman has these dreams in this sequence, know well I am going to be born to her."

And it happened. Buddha's mother dreamed the same sequence. The sequence was known all over India, because it was no ordinary statement. It was known to everyone, particularly those who were interested in religion and the deeper things of life and the esoteric ways of life. It was known, so the dreams were interpreted. Freud was not the first interpreter -- and, of course, not the deepest. Only in the West was he the first.

So Buddha's father immediately called dream interpreters, the Freuds and Jungs of those days, and he asked, "What does this sequence mean? I am afraid. These dreams are rare, and they go on repeating in the same sequence. There are one, two, three, four, five, six dreams continuously being repeated. There are the same dreams, as if one is seeing the same film again and again. What is happening?"

So they told him, "You are going to be the father of a great soul -- one who is going to be a buddha. But then your wife is going to be in danger, because whenever this buddha is born it is difficult for the mother to survive."
The father asked, "Why?" The interpreters said, "We cannot say why, but this soul who is going to be born has made a statement that when he will be born again, the mother will die immediately."

Later on Buddha was asked, "Why did your mother die immediately?" He said, "Giving birth to a buddha is such a big event that everything else becomes futile afterwards. So the mother cannot exist. She will have to be born again to start anew. It is such a climax giving birth to a buddha, it is such a peak, that the mother cannot exist beyond it."

So the mother died. And Buddha had said in his previous life that he would be born while his mother was standing under a palm tree -- and it happened. The mother was standing under a palm tree -- standing while Buddha was born. And he had said, "I will be born while my mother is standing under a palm tree, and I will take seven steps. Immediately, I will walk. These are the signs I give to you," he said, "so that you will know that a buddha is born." And he carried out everything.

And this is not only so about Buddha. It is so about Jesus, it is so about Mahavir, it is so about many others. Every Jain TIRTHANKARA has predicted in his previous life how he is going to be born. And they have given particular dream sequences -- that such and such will be the symbols -- and they have told how it will happen.

You can direct. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything, because dream is the very stuff of this world. This life is made out of the stuff of dreams. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything. This sutra says, OVER DEATH ITSELF. Then one can give a certain birth, a certain life to oneself.

We are just victims. We do not know why we are born, why we die. Who directs us -- and why? There seems to be no reason. It all seems just a chaos, just accidental. It is because we are not masters. Once we are masters it is not like this.

The eighth technique: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. There is a slight difference in the techniques -- slight modifications. But though the differences are slight in the techniques, for you they may be great. A single word makes a great difference. WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH. The incoming breath has one junction where it turns, the outgoing breath has another junction where it turns. With these two turnings -- and we have discussed these turnings -- a slight difference is made: that is, slight in the technique, but for the seeker it may be great. Only one condition is added -- WITH UTMOST DEVOTION -- and the whole technique becomes different.

In the first form of it there was no question of devotion, just a scientific technique. You do it, and it works. But there are persons who cannot do such dry, scientific techniques. Those who are heart-oriented, those who belong to the world of devotion, for them a slight difference has been made: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER.
If you are not of the scientific bent, of the scientific attitude, if you are not a scientific mind, then try this: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION -- with faith, love, trust -- CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. How to do this? How? You can have devotion about someone: about Krishna, about Christ you can have devotion. But how can you have devotion about yourself, about this junction of breathing? The phenomenon seems absolutely non-devotional. But that depends....

Tantra says that the body is the temple. Your body is the temple of the divine, the abode of the divine, so do not treat your body as an object. It is sacred, it is holy. And while you are taking a breath in, it is not only you who is taking the breath, it is the divine within you. You are eating, you are moving or walking... look at it in this way: it is not you, but the divine moving in you. Then the whole thing becomes absolutely devotional.

It is said about many saints that they love their bodies. They treat their bodies as if their bodies belong to their beloveds. You can treat your body in this way or you can treat it just like a mechanism -- that again is an attitude. You can treat it with guilt, sin; you can treat it as something dirty; you can treat it as something miraculous, as a miracle; you can treat it as the abode of the divine. It depends on you. If you can treat your body as a temple, then this technique will be helpful -- WITH UTMOST DEVOTION...

Try it. While you are eating, try it. Do not think that YOU are eating. Think that it is the divine in you who is eating, and look at the change. You are eating the same thing, you are the same, but immediately everything becomes different. You are giving the food to the divine. You are taking a bath -- a very ordinary, trivial thing -- but change the attitude: feel that you are giving a bath to the divine in you. Then this technique will be easy: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER.

The ninth technique: LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING.

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. Try it: suddenly you have gone dead. Leave the body! Do not move it, because you are dead. Just imagine that you are dead. You cannot move the body, you cannot move the eyes, you cannot cry, you cannot scream, you cannot do anything, you are just dead. And then feel how it feels. But do not deceive. You can deceive -- you can slightly move the body. Do not move.

If some mosquito is there, then treat the body as if it is dead. It is one of the most used techniques.
Raman Maharshi attained his enlightenment through this technique, but it was not a technique used by him in his life. In his life it suddenly happened, spontaneously. But he must have persisted with this in some past life, because nothing happens spontaneously. Everything has a causal link, a causality. Suddenly one night Raman felt -- he was just young, fourteen or fifteen at the time -- that he was going to die. And it was so certain in his mind that death had taken over. He couldn't move his body, he felt as if he was paralyzed. Then he felt a sudden choking, and he knew that now the heart was going to stop. He could not even cry and say to another, "I am going to die."

Sometimes it happens in some nightmare -- you cannot cry, you cannot move. Even when you become awake for a few moments you cannot do anything. That happened. He had absolute power over his consciousness, but no power over his body. He knew he was there, that he was present, conscious, alert, but he felt he was going to die. And the knowledge became so certain that there was no other possibility, so he just gave up. He closed his eyes and remained there, just waiting to die; he waited there just to die.

By and by the body became stiff. The body died, but then it became a problem. He knew that the body had died, but he was there and he knew it. He knew that he was alive and that the body had died. Then he came back. In the morning the body became okay but the same man never returned -- because he had known death. He had known a different realm, a different dimension of consciousness.

He escaped from the house. That death experience changed him completely. He became one of the very few enlightened persons of this age.

This is the technique. This happened spontaneously to Raman, but it is not going to happen spontaneously to you. But try it. In some life it may become spontaneous. It may happen while you are trying it. And if it is not going to happen, the effort is never wasted. It is in you; it remains in you as a seed. Sometime, when the time is ripe and the rains will fall, it will sprout.
Every spontaneity is just like this. The seed was sown some time ago, but the time was not ripe; there were no rains. In another life the time becomes ripe. You are more mature, more experienced, more frustrated with the world -- then suddenly, in a certain situation, there are rains and the seed explodes.

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Of course, while you are dying it will not be a happy moment. It is not going to be so blissful while you are feeling that you are dead. Fear will take you, anger may come in the mind, or frustration, sadness, sorrow, anguish... anything. It will differ from individual to individual.

The sutra says: ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you feel enraged, stay so. If you feel sad, stay so. If you feel anxiety, fear, stay so. You are dead and you cannot do anything, so stay so. Whatsoever is in the mind, the body is dead and you cannot do anything, so stay.

That staying is beautiful. If you can stay for a few minutes, suddenly you will feel that everything has changed. But we start moving. If there is some emotion in the mind, the body begins to move. That is why we call it "emotion" -- it creates motion in the body. If you are angry, suddenly your body begins to move. If you are sad, your body begins to move. That is why it is called emotion, because it creates motion in the body. Feel dead and do not allow emotions to move your body. Let them be there, but you STAY SO -- fixed, dead. Whatsoever is there... no movement. Stay! No movement.

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. This OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH was the method of Meher Baba. For years together he was staring just at the ceiling of his room. For years together he was just lying dead on the floor, staring at the ceiling without moving an eyelash, without moving his eyes. He would lie down for hours together, just staring, not doing anything. Staring with the eyes is good, because you become fixed again in the third eye. And once you are fixed in the third eye, even if you want to move the eyelids you cannot; they become fixed.

Meher Baba attained through this staring, and you say, "How with these small exercises...?" But for three years he was staring at the ceiling not doing anything. Three years is a long time. Do it for three minutes and you will feel as if you have been lying there for three years. Three minutes will become very, very long. It will look as if time is not passing and as if the clock has stopped.

Meher Baba stared and stared and stared. By and by thoughts ceased, movement ceased, and he became just a consciousness, he became just a staring. Then he remained silent for his whole life. He became so silent inside by this staring that it became impossible for him to formulate words again.

Meher Baba was in America. There was one man who could read others' thoughts, who could do mind readings, and he was really one of the rarest mind readers. He would close his eyes, sit before you, and within a few minutes he would become attuned with you and he would begin to write what you are thinking. Thousands and thousands of times he was examined, and he was always right, always correct. So someone brought him to Meher Baba. He sat there, and this was the only failure of his life -- the only failure. But then again we cannot say it was a failure. He tried and tried, and he began to perspire, but he couldn't catch a single word.

Pen in his hand, he remained there and said, "What type of man is this? I cannot read because there is nothing to read. This man is absolutely vacant. I even forget that someone is sitting there. After closing my eyes, I have to open them again and look to see whether that man is there or whether he has escaped. So it is difficult to concentrate, because the moment I close my eyes I feel I am being deceived -- as if that man has escaped and there is no one before me. I have to open my eyes again, and I find that this man is there. And he is not thinking at all." That staring, that constant staring had stopped his mind completely.
OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. These are slight modifications. Anything will do... you are dead -- it is enough.

ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Even this part can become one technique. You are in anger: lie down, remain in the anger. Do not move from it, do not do anything, just remain still.

Krishnamurti goes on talking about this. His whole technique depends on this single thing: ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you are angry then be angry, and remain angry. Do not move. If you can stay so, anger will go and you will come out a different man. If you are in anxiety, do not do anything. Remain there, stay there. The anxiety will go; you will come out a different man. And once you have looked at anxiety without being moved by it, you will be the master.

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. This last one is physical and easy to do, because sucking is the first thing a child has to do. Sucking is the first act of life. When the child is born, he begins to cry. You may not have tried to penetrate into why there is this crying. He is not really crying -- it appears to us that he is crying -- he is just sucking air. And if the child cannot cry, within a few minutes he will be dead, because crying is the first effort to suck air. The child was not breathing while he was in the womb. He was alive without breathing. He was doing the same which yogis are doing underground. He was just getting prana without breathing -- pure prana from the mother.

That is why the love between the child and the mother is an altogether different thing from other loves, because the purest prana -- energy -- joins both. Now this can never happen again. There was a subtle pranic relationship. The mother was giving her prana to the child, and the child was not breathing at all. When he is born, he is thrown out of the mother into an unknown world. Now the prana, the energy, will not reach him so easily. He has to breathe himself.

The first cry is an effort to suck, and then he will suck the milk from the mother's breast. These are the first basic acts which you have done. Whatsoever YOU have done comes later -- these are the first life acts. They can be practiced also. This sutra says: OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. Suck something -- just suck the air, but forget the air and become the sucking. What does this mean? You are sucking something; you are the sucker, not the sucking. You are standing behind and sucking.

This sutra says, do not stand behind, move in the act and become the sucking. Try anything that will work. You are running -- become the running, do not be the runner. Become the running and forget the runner. Feel that there is no runner inside, just the process of running. You are the process, a river-like process running. Nobody is there inside. It is quiet inside and there is only a process.

Sucking is good, but you will feel that it is very difficult because we have forgotten it completely -- but not really completely, however, because we go on substituting for it. The mother's breast is substituted by a cigarette; you go on sucking it. It is nothing but the nipple, the mother's breast and the nipple. And when the warm smoke flows in, it is just like warm milk.

So those who were not really allowed to suck the mother's breast as much as they wanted will smoke later on. This is a substitute, but the substitute will do. While you are smoking a cigarette become the sucking. Forget the cigarette, forget the smoker: become the smoking.

There is the object you are sucking, there is the subject who is sucking, and the process in between of sucking. Become the sucking, become the process. Try it. You will have to try it with many things; then you will find out what is right for you.
You are drinking water, the cold water is going in -- become the drinking. Do not drink the water. Forget the water, forget yourself and your thirst, just become the drinking -- the very process. Become the coolness, the touch, the entry, and the sucking that has to be given to the process.

Why not? What will happen? If you become the sucking, what will happen? If you can become the sucking, immediately you will become innocent, like a first-day, newly-born child -- because that is the first process. You will be regressed in a way. But the hankering is there. The very being of man hankers after sucking. He tries many things, but nothing helps because the point is missed. Unless you become the sucking, nothing will help. So try it.

I gave this method to one man. He had tried many things; he had tried many, many methods. Then he came to me, so I asked him, "If I give you only one thing to choose in the whole world, what are you going to choose?" And I told him immediately to close his eyes and tell me, and not think about it. He became afraid, hesitant, so I told him, "Do not be afraid, do not be hesitant. Be frank and tell me."

He said, "This is absurd, but a breast appears before me."
And then he began to feel guilty, so I said, "Do not feel guilty. Nothing is wrong in a breast; it is one of the most beautiful things, so why be guilty?"

But he said, "This has always been an obsession with me." And he said to me, "Please tell me first, then you can proceed with your method and the technique: first tell me why I am so much interested in the breasts of women? Whenever I look at a woman, the first thing I see is the breast. The whole body is secondary."

And it is not so only with him, it is so with everyone -- with almost everyone. And it is natural, because the breast of the mother was the first acquaintance with the universe. It is basic. The first contact with the universe was the mother's breast. That is why breasts are so appealing. They look beautiful; they attract, they have a magnetic force. That magnetic force comes from your unconscious. That was the first thing with which you came in contact, and the contact was lovely, it felt beautiful. It gives you food, instant vitality, love, everything. The contact was soft, receptive, inviting. It has remained so in the mind of man.

So I told that man, "Now I will give you the method." And this was the method I gave him, to suck something and become the sucking. I told him, "Just close your eyes. Imagine your mother's breasts or anybody's breasts that you like. Imagine, and start sucking as if there is a real breast. Start sucking." He started sucking. Within three days he was sucking so fast, so madly, he became so much enchanted by it. He told me, "It has become a problem -- I want to suck the whole day. And it is so beautiful, and such deep silence is created by it."

Within three months the sucking became a very, very silent gesture. The lips stopped, you couldn't even have judged that he was doing something. But inner sucking had started. He was sucking the whole day. It became a mantra, a JAPA -- a mantra repetition.
After three months he came to me and said, "Something strange is happening to me. Something sweet is falling from my head onto my tongue continuously. And it is so sweet and so energy filling that I do not need any food, there is no hunger left. Eating has become just a formality. I take something in order not to create any problems in the family. But something is continuously coming to me. It is so sweet, life-giving."

I told him to continue. Three months more, and one day he came just mad, dancing to me, and he said, "Sucking has disappeared, but I am a different man. I am no more the same man who had come to you. Some door has opened within me. Something has broken and there is no desire left. Now I do not want anything -- not even God, not even MOKSHA -- liberation. I do not want anything. Now everything is okay as it is. I accept it and I am blissful."

Try this. Just suck something and become the sucking. It may be helpful to many because it is so basic.
This much for today.

7Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #6 周二 1月 31, 2012 6:11 pm

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
Chapter #6

Chapter title: Devices to transcend dreaming
6 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210065
ShortTitle: VBT106
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 80 mins

One friend has asked,

Question 1

WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER FACTORS WHICH CAN MAKE ONE CONSCIOUS WHILE DREAMING?
This is a significant question for all those who are interested in meditation, because meditation is really a transcending of the process of dreaming. You are constantly dreaming -- not only in the night, not only while you are asleep; you are dreaming the whole day. This is the first point to be understood. While you are awake you are still dreaming.

Just close your eyes at any time of the day. Relax the body and you will feel that the dreaming is there. It never disappears, it is only suppressed by our daily activities. It is like the stars in the day. In the night you see the stars. In the day you cannot see them, but they are there always. They are simply suppressed by the sunlight.

If you go into a deep well, then you can see the stars in the sky even in the day. A certain darkness is needed to see the stars. So go into a deep well and look from the bottom, and you will be able to see the stars in the day also. The stars are there. It is not that in the night they are there and in the day they are not, they are always there. In the night you can see them easily. In the day you cannot see them because the sunlight becomes a barrier.

The same is true with dreaming. It is not that you dream while you are asleep. In sleep you can feel dreams easily because the activity of the day is no more there; thus that inner activity can be seen and felt. When you get up in the morning, the dreaming continues inside while you start acting on the outside.

This process of activity, of daily activity, simply suppresses the dreaming. The dreaming is there. Close your eyes, relax in an armchair, and suddenly you can feel: the stars are there; they have not gone anywhere. The dreams are there always. There is a continuous activity.

The second point. If the dreaming continues, you cannot be said to be really awake. In the night you are more asleep, in the day you are less asleep. The difference is relative, because if the dreaming is there you cannot be said to be really awake.

Dreaming creates a film over the consciousness. This film becomes like smoke -- you are surrounded by it. You cannot be really awake while you are dreaming, whether in the day or in the night. So the second thing: you can only be said to be awake when there is no dreaming at all.

We call Buddha the awakened one. What is this awakening? This awakening is really the cessation of inner dreaming. There is no dream inside. You move there, but there is no dream. It is as if there were no star in the sky; it has become pure space. When there is no dreaming, you become pure space.

This purity, this innocence, this non-dreaming consciousness, is what is known as enlightenment -- the awakening. For centuries spirituality all over the world, East or West, has said that man is asleep. Jesus says this, Buddha says this, the Upanishads talk about this: man is asleep. So while you are asleep in the night you are just relatively more asleep; in the day you are less asleep. But spirituality says that man is asleep. This has to be understood.

What is meant by this? Gurdjieff, in this century, emphasized this fact that man is asleep. "In fact," he said, "man is a sort of sleep. Everyone is deeply asleep."

What is the reason for saying that? You cannot know, you cannot remember who you are. Do you know who you are? If you meet a person in the street and you ask him who he is and he cannot reply, what will you think? You will think that he is either mad, intoxicated, or just asleep. If he cannot answer who he is, what are you going to think about him? On the spiritual path everyone is like that. You cannot answer who you are.

This is the first meaning when Gurdjieff or Jesus or anyone says that man is asleep: you are not conscious about yourself. You do not know yourself; you have never met yourself. You know many things in the objective world, but you do not know the subject. Your state of mind is as if you had gone to see a film. On the screen the film is running, and you have become so absorbed in it that the only thing you know is the film, the story, whatsoever is appearing on the screen. Then if someone asks you who you are, you cannot say anything.

Dreaming is just the film -- JUST the film! It is the mind reflecting the world. In the mirror of the mind the world is reflected; that is what dreaming is. And you are so deeply involved in it, so much identified with it, that you have completely forgotten who you are. This is what being asleep means: the dreamer is lost in the dreaming. You see everything except yourself; you feel everything except yourself; you know everything except yourself. This self-ignorance is the sleep. Unless dreaming ceases completely, you cannot awaken unto yourself.

You might have felt it sometimes while looking at a film for three hours, and suddenly the film stops and you come back to yourself. You remember that three hours have passed, you remember that it was just a film. You feel your tears... you have been weeping because the film was a tragedy to you, or you were laughing, or you were doing something else, and now you laugh about yourself. What nonsense you were doing! It was just a film, just a story. There was nothing on the screen -- just a play of light and shadow, just an electrical play. Now you laugh: you have come back to yourself. But where were you for these three hours?

You were not at your center. You had moved completely to the periphery. There, where the film was moving, you had gone. You were not at your center; you were not with yourself. You were somewhere else.

This happens in dreaming; this is what our life is. The film is only for three hours, but this dreaming is running for lives and lives and lives. Even if suddenly the dreaming stops you will not be able to recognize who you are. Suddenly you will feel very faint, even afraid. You will try to move again into the film because that is known. You are acquainted with it, you are well adjusted to it.

For when the stopping of the dreaming happens there is a path, particularly in Zen, which is known as the path of sudden enlightenment. There are techniques in these one hundred and twelve methods, there are many techniques which can give you sudden awakening. But it can be too much, and you may not be capable of bearing it. You may just explode. You may die even, because you have lived with dreaming so long that you have no memory of who you are if there is no dreaming.

If this whole world should suddenly disappear and you alone are left, it would be such a great shock that you would die. The same would happen if suddenly all dreaming disappeared from the consciousness. Your world will disappear, because your world was your dreaming.

We are not really in the world. Rather, "the world" consists not of outside things to us, but of our dreams. So everyone lives in his own dream world.

Remember, it is not one world that we go on talking about. Geographically it is, but psychologically there are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is a world of its own. And if your dreaming disappears, your world disappears. Without dreams it is difficult for you to live. That is why sudden methods are not used generally, only gradual methods are used.

It is good to note this: gradual methods are used not because there is any need of gradual processes. You can suddenly jump into realization this very moment. There is no barrier; there has never been any barrier. You are already that realization, you can jump this very moment. But that may prove dangerous, fatal. You may not be capable of bearing it. It is going to be too much for you.

You are attuned only to false dreams. Reality you cannot face; you cannot encounter it. You are a hothouse plant -- you live in your dreams. They help you in many ways. They are not just dreams, for you they are the reality.

Gradual methods are used not because realization needs time. Realization needs no time! Realization needs no time at all. Realization is not something to be attained in the future, but with gradual methods you will attain it in the future. So what are the gradual methods doing? They are not really helping you to "realize realization," they are helping you to bear it. They are making you capable, strong, so that when the happening happens you can bear it.

There are seven methods through which immediately you can force your way into enlightenment. But you will not be capable of bearing it. You may go blind -- too much of light. Or you may suddenly die -- too much of bliss.

This dreaming, this deep sleep we are in, how can it be transcended? This question is meaningful in transcending it: WILL YOU
PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER FACTORS WHICH CAN MAKE ONE CONSCIOUS WHILE DREAMING? I will talk about two methods more. One we discussed yesterday. Today, two more that are even easier.

One is to start acting, behaving as if the whole world is just a dream. Whatsoever you are doing, remember this is a dream. While eating, remember this is a dream. While walking, remember this is a dream. Let your mind continuously remember while you are awake that everything is a dream. This is the reason for calling the world MAYA, illusion, dream. This is not a philosophical argument.

Unfortunately, when Shankara was translated into English, German and French, into Western languages, he was understood to be just a philosopher. That has created much misunderstanding. In the West there are philosophers -- for example, Berkeley -- who say that the world is just a dream, a projection of the mind. But this is a philosophical theory. Berkeley proposes it as an hypothesis.

When Shankara says that the world is a dream it is not philosophical, not a theory. Shankara proposes it as a help, as a support for a particular meditation. And this is the meditation: if you want to remember while dreaming that this is a dream, you will have to start while you are awake. Normally, while you are dreaming you cannot remember that this is a dream; you think that this is a reality.

Why do you think that this is a reality? Because the whole day you are thinking everything is a reality. That has become the attitude, a fixed attitude. While awake you were taking a bath -- it was real. While awake you were eating -- it was real. While awake you were talking with a friend -- it was real. For the whole day, the whole life, whatsoever you are thinking, your attitude is that this is real. This becomes fixed. This becomes a fixed attitude in the mind.

So while you are dreaming in the night, the same attitude goes on working, that this is real. So let us first analyze. There must be some similarity between dreaming and reality; otherwise this attitude would be somewhat difficult.

I am seeing you. Then I close my eyes and I go into a dream, and I see you in my dream. In both seeings there is no difference.

While I am actually seeing you, what am I doing? Your picture is reflected in my eyes. I am not seeing YOU. Your picture is mirrored in my eyes, and then that picture is transformed through mysterious processes -- and science is still not in a position to say how. That picture is transformed chemically and carried somewhere inside the head, but science is still not able to say where -- where exactly this thing happens. It is not happening in the eyes; the eyes are just windows. I am not seeing you with the eyes, I am seeing you THROUGH the eyes.

In the eyes you are reflected. You may be just a picture; you may be a reality, you may be a dream. Remember, dreams are three-dimensional. I can recognize a picture because a picture is two-dimensional. Dreams are three-dimensional, so they look exactly like you. And the eyes cannot say whether whatsoever is seen is real or unreal. There is no way to judge; the eyes are not the judge.

Then the picture is transformed into chemical messages. Those chemical messages are like electrical waves; they go somewhere in the head. It is still unknown where the point is that the eyes come in contact with the surface of seeing. Just waves reach to me and then they are decoded. Then I again decode them, and in this way I know what is happening.

I am always inside, and you are always outside, and there is no meeting. So whether you are real or just a dream is a problem. Even this very moment, there is no way to judge whether I am dreaming or you are really here. Listening to me, how can you say that really you are listening to me, that you are not dreaming? There is no way. That is why the attitude which you maintain the whole day is carried over into the night. And while you are dreaming you take it as real.

Try the opposite; that is what Shankara means. He says that the whole world is an illusion, he says the whole world is a dreaming -- remember this. But we are stupid people. If Shankara says, "This is a dream," then we say, "What is the need to do anything? If this is just a dream, then there is no need to eat. Why go on eating and thinking that this is a dream? Don't eat!" But then remember -- when you feel hunger, it is a dream. Or eat, and when you feel that you have eaten too much, remember, this is a dream.

Shankara is not telling you to change the dream, remember, because the effort to change the dream is again falsely based on the belief that it is real; otherwise there is no need to change anything. Shankara is just saying that whatever is the case is a dream.

Remember this: do not do anything to change it, just remember it constantly. Try to remember for three weeks continuously that whatsoever you are doing it is just a dream. In the beginning it is very difficult. You will fall again and again into the old pattern of the mind, you will start thinking that this is a reality. You will have to constantly awaken yourself to remind yourself that "This is a dream." If for three weeks continuously you can maintain this attitude, then in the fourth or fifth week, any night while dreaming you will suddenly remember that "This is a dream."

This is one way to penetrate dreams with consciousness, with awareness. If you can remember in the night while dreaming that this is a dream, then in the day you will not need any effort to remember that this is also a dream. You will know it then.
In the beginning, while you are practicing this, it will be just a make-believe. You start just in faith..."This is a dream." But when you can remember in dreaming that this is a dream, it will become a reality. Then in the day, when you get up you will not feel that you are getting up from sleep, you will feel you are simply getting up from one dreaming to another. Then it will become a reality. And if the whole twenty-four hours becomes dreaming, and you can feel and remember it, you will be standing at your center. Then your consciousness will have become double-arrowed.

You are feeling dreams, and if you are feeling them as dreams you will start to feel the dreamer -- the subject. If you take dreams as real, you cannot feel the subject. If the film has become real, you forget yourself. When the film stops and you know that it was unreal, your reality erupts, breaks out; you can feel yourself. This is one way.

This has been one of the oldest Indian methods. That is why we have insisted on the world being unreal. We do not mean it philosophically; we do not say that this house is unreal so you can pass through the walls. We do not mean that! When we say that this house is unreal, it is a device. This is not an argument against the house.

So Berkeley proposed that the whole world is just a dream. One day, in the morning, he was walking with Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson was a hardened realist, so Berkeley said, "Have you heard about my theory? I am working on it. I feel that the whole world is unreal, and it cannot be proved that it is real. And the burden of proving it is on those who say that it is real. I say it is unreal -- just like dreams. Johnson was not a philosopher, but he had a very astute logical mind.

They are on the street, just walking in the morning on a lonely street. Johnson then takes one stone in his hand and hits Berkeley's leg. Blood oozes out, and Berkeley screams. Johnson says, "Why are you screaming if the stone is just a dream? Whatsoever you say, you believe in the reality of the stone. What you are saying is one thing, and your behavior is something different and contrary. If your house is just a dream, then to where are you returning? Where are you returning after the morning walk? If your wife is just a dream, you will not meet her again."

Realists have always argued this way, but they cannot argue this way with Shankara because his is not a philosophical theory. It is not saying anything about the reality; it is not proposing anything about the universe. Rather, it is a device to change your mind, to change the basic fixed attitude so that you can look at the world in a different, an altogether different way.

This is a problem, continuously a problem for Indian thought -- because for Indian thought everything is just a device for meditation. We are not concerned about its being true or untrue. We are concerned about its utility in transforming man.

This is emphatically different from the Western mind. When they propose a theory they are concerned with whether this is true or untrue, whether this can be proved logically or not. When we propose anything we are not concerned about its truth; we are concerned about its utility, we are concerned about its capacity, its capability to transform the human mind. It may be true, it may not be true. Really, it is neither -- it is simply a device.

I have seen flowers outside. In the morning the sun rises and everything is just beautiful. You have never been outside, and you have never seen flowers, and you have never seen the morning sun. You have never seen the open sky; you do not know what beauty is. You have lived in a closed prison. I want to lead you out. I want you to come out under the open sky to meet these flowers. How am I to do it?

You do not know flowers. If I talk about flowers, you think, "He has gone mad. There are no flowers." If I talk about the morning sun, you think, "He is a visionary. He sees visions and dreams. He is a poet." If I talk about the open sky, you will laugh. You will start laughing, "Where is the open sky? There are only walls and walls and walls."

So what am I to do? I must devise something which you can understand and which helps you to go out, so I say that the house is on fire and I start running. It becomes infectious: you run after me and go out. Then you will know that what I said was neither true nor false. It was just a device. Then you will know flowers and then you can forgive me.

Buddha was doing that, Mahavir was doing that, Shiva was doing that, Shankara was doing that. We can forgive them later on. We have always forgiven them because once we go out we know what they were doing. And then we understand that it was useless to argue with them because it was not a question of arguing. The fire was nowhere, but we could not understand only that language. Flowers were, but we could not understand the language of the flowers, those symbols were meaningless for us.

So this is one way. Then there is a second method at the other pole. This method makes one pole; the other method makes another pole of the same thing. One method is to start feeling, remembering, that everything is a dream. The other is not to think anything about the world, but just to go on remembering that YOU ARE.

Gurdjieff used this second method. This second method comes from the Sufi tradition, from Islam. They worked on it very deeply. Remember "I am" -- whatsoever you are doing. You are drinking water, you are eating your food -- remember, "I am." Go on eating and go on remembering, "I am, I am." Do not forget it! It is difficult because you already think that you know you are, so what is the need to go on remembering this? You never remember it, but it is a very, very potential technique.

When walking remember, "I am." Let the walking be there, go on walking, but be constantly fixed in this self-remembering of "I am, I am, I am." Do not forget this. You are listening to me -- just do it here. You are listening to me. Do not be so much merged, involved, identified. Whatsoever I am saying, remember, go on remembering. Listening is there, words are there, someone is talking, you are -- "I am, I am, I am." Let this "I am" be a constant factor of awareness.

It is very difficult. You cannot remember continuously even for a single minute. Try it. Put your watch before your eyes and look at the hands moving. One second, two seconds, three seconds... go on looking at it. Do two things: look at the movement of the hand which is showing seconds, and continuously remember "I am, I am." With every second go on remembering "I am." Within five or six seconds you will feel that you have forgotten. Suddenly you will remember that "Many seconds have passed and I have not remembered `I am.'"

Even to remember for one complete minute is a miracle. And if you can remember for one minute, the technique is for you. Then do it. Through it you will be capable of going beyond dreams and of knowing that dreams are dreams.

How does it work? If the whole day you can remember "I am," then this will penetrate your sleep also. And when you will be dreaming, continuously you will remember, "I am." If you can remember "I am" in the dream, suddenly the dream becomes just a dream. Then the dream cannot deceive you, then the dream cannot be felt as reality. This is the mechanism: the dream is felt as reality because you are missing the self-remembering; you are missing "I am." If there is no remembering of oneself, then the dream becomes reality. If there is the remembering of oneself, then reality, the so-called reality, becomes just a dream.
This is the difference between dreaming and reality. For a meditative mind, or for the science of meditation, this is the only difference. If you are, then the whole reality is just a dream. If you are not, then the dreaming becomes reality.

Nagarjuna says, "Now I am, for the world is not. While I was not, the world was. Only one can exist." That doesn't mean that the world has disappeared. Nagarjuna is not talking about this world, he is talking about the world of dreaming. Either you can be or the dreams can be -- both cannot be.

So the first step will be to continue remembering "I am" constantly; simply, "I am." Do not say "Ram," do not say "Shyam." Do not use any name, because you are not that. Simply use, "I am."

Try it in any activity and then feel it. The more real you become inside, the more unreal becomes the surrounding world. The reality becomes "I", and the world becomes unreal. The world is real or the "I" is real -- both cannot be real. You are feeling that you are just a dream now; then the world is real. Change the emphasis. Become real, and the world will become unreal.
Gurdjieff worked on this method continuously. His chief disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, relates that when Gurdjieff was working on him with this method, and he was practicing for three months continuously this remembering of "I am, I am, I am," after three months everything stopped. Thoughts, dreaming, everything stopped. Only one note remained inside like eternal music: "I am, I am, I am, I am." But then this was not an effort. This was a spontaneous activity going on: "I am." Then Gurdjieff called Ouspensky out of the house. For three months he had been kept in the house and wasn't allowed to move out.

Then Gurdjieff said, "Come with me." They were residing in a Russian town, Tiflis. Gurdjieff called him out and they went into the street. Ouspensky writes in his diary, "For the first time I could understand what Jesus meant when he said that man is asleep. The whole city looked to me as if it was asleep. People were moving in their sleep; shopkeepers were selling in their sleep; customers were buying in their sleep. The whole city was asleep. I looked at Gurdjieff: only he was awake. The whole city was asleep. They were angry, they were fighting, they were loving, buying, selling, doing everything."

Ouspensky says, "Now I could see their faces, their eyes: they were asleep. They were not there. The inner center was missing; it was not there." Ouspensky said to Gurdjieff, "I do not want to go there any more. What has happened to the city? Everyone seems asleep, drugged."

Gurdjieff said, "Nothing has happened to the city, something has happened to you. You have been undrugged; the city is the same. It is the same place you moved around in three months ago, but you couldn't see that other people are asleep because you were also asleep. Now you can see because a certain quality of awareness has come to you. With three months of practising "I am" continuously, you have become aware in a very small measure. You have become aware! A part of your consciousness has gone beyond dreaming. That is why you can see that everyone is asleep, dead, moving, drugged, as if hypnotized."

Ouspensky says, "I couldn't bear that phenomenon -- everyone asleep! Whatsoever they are doing, they are not responsible for it. They are not! How can they be responsible?" He came back and he asked Gurdjieff, "What is this? Am I deceived somehow? Have you done something to me that the whole city seems asleep? I cannot believe my own eyes."

But this will happen to anyone. If you can remember yourself, then you will know that no one is remembering himself, and in this way each goes on moving. The whole world is asleep. But start while you are awake. Any moment that you remember, start "I am."
I do not mean that you have to repeat the words "I am," rather, have the feeling. Taking a bath, feel "I am." Let there be the touch of the cold shower, and let yourself be there behind, feeling it and remembering "I am." Remember, I am not saying that verbally you have to repeat "I am." You can repeat it, but that repetition will not give you awareness. Repetition may even create more sleep. There are many people who are repeating many things. They go on repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram..." and if they are just repeating without awareness then this "Ram, Ram, Ram..." becomes a drug. They can sleep well through it.

That is why Mahesh Yogi has so much appeal in the West, because he is giving mantras for people to repeat. And in the West sleep
has become one of the most serious problems. Sleep is totally disturbed. Natural sleep has disappeared. Only through tranquilizers and drugs can you sleep; otherwise sleep has become impossible. This is the reason for Mahesh Yogi's appeal. It is because if you constantly repeat something, that repetition gives you deep sleep; that is all.
So the so-called transcendental meditation is nothing but a psychological tranquilizer. It is nothing -- just a tranquilizer. It helps, but it is good for sleep, not for meditation. You can sleep well, a more calm sleep will be there. It is good, but it is not meditation at all. If you repeat a word constantly it creates a certain boredom, and boredom is good for sleep.

So anything monotonous, repetitive can help sleep. The child in the mother's womb sleeps for nine months continuously, and the reason for this you may not know. The reason is only the "tick-tock, tick-tock" of the heart of the mother. Continuously there is the beat, the heartbeat. It is one of the most monotonous things in the world. With the same beat continuously repeating, the child is drugged. He goes on sleeping.

That is why whenever the child is crying, screaming, creating any problem, the mother puts his head near her heart. Then suddenly he feels good and goes into sleep. Again it is due to the heartbeat. He becomes again a part of the womb. That is why even if you are not a child and your wife, your beloved puts your head on her heart, you will feel sleepy from the monotonous beat.

Psychologists suggest that if you cannot sleep, then concentrate on the clock. Just concentrate on the clock's tick-tock, tick-tock. It repeats the heartbeat, and you can fall asleep. Anything repetitive will help.

So this "I am," the remembering of "I am," is not a verbal mantra. It is not going to be repeated verbally -- feel it! Be sensitive to your being. When you touch someone's hand do not only touch his hand, feel your touch also, feel yourself also -- that you are here in this touch, present totally. While eating, do not only eat, feel yourself eating as well. This feeling, this sensitivity must penetrate deeper and deeper into your mind.

One day, suddenly, you are awake at your center, functioning for the first time. And then the whole world becomes a dream, then you can know that your dreaming is a dreaming. And when you know that your dreaming is a dreaming, dreaming stops. It can continue only if it is felt as real. It is stopped if it is felt as unreal.

And once dreaming stops in you, you are a different man. The old man is dead; the sleepy man is dead. That human being which you were you are no more. For the first time you become aware; for the first time in the whole world that is asleep, you are awake. You become a buddha, an awakened one.

With this awakening there is no misery, after this awakening there is no death, through this awakening there is no more fear. You become for the first time free of everything. To be free of sleep, to be free of dreaming, is to be free of everything. You attain freedom. Hate, anger, greed disappear. You become just love. Not loving, you become just love!
One question more -- and it is relatively the same --

Question 2

IF WE ARE ALL ACTORS IN A PLAY THAT IS ALREADY WRITTEN, HOW CAN MEDITATION TRANSFORM US WITHOUT THE PLAY ITSELF CONTAINING A CHAPTER FOR OUR TRANSFORMATION AT A SPECIFIC TIME? AND IF SUCH A CHAPTER IS THERE ALREADY WAITING TO UNFOLD AT ITS DUE TIME, WHY MEDITATE? WHY MAKE ANY EFFORT AT ALL?

This is the same; it contains the same fallacy. I am not saying that everything is determined. I am not proposing this as a theory to explain the universe. It is a device.

India has always been working with this device of fate. It is not meant by this that everything is predetermined. This is not meant at all! The only reason to propose this is that if you take it that everything is determined, everything becomes a dream. If you take things in this way, if you believe this way -- that everything is predetermined; that, for example, you are going to die on a particular day -- EVERYTHING becomes a dream. It is not determined, it is not fixed! No one is that much interested in you. The universe is completely unaware of you and when you are going to die. It is so useless a thing. Your death is irrelevant to the universe.

Do not think yourself so important that the whole universe is determining your day of death -- the time, the minute, the moment -- no! You are NOT the center. It makes no difference to the universe whether you are or you are not. But this fallacy goes on working in the mind. It is created in childhood and it becomes part of the unconscious.

A child is born. He cannot give anything to the world, but he has to take many things. He cannot repay, he cannot give back anything. He is so impotent -- just helpless. He will need food, he will need love, he will need shelter, he will need warmth. Everything is to be supplied.

A child is born absolutely helpless -- particularly man's child. No animal is so helpless. That is why no animal creates a family -- there is no need. But man's child is so helpless, so absolutely helpless, he cannot exist without there being a mother to protect, a father, a family, a society. He cannot exist alone. He would die immediately.

He is so much dependent. He will need love, he will need food, he will need everything, and he will demand everything. And the mother will supply, the father will supply, the family will supply. The child begins to think that he is the center of the whole world. Everything is to be supplied to him; he has but to demand. Just to demand is enough, no other effort is needed.

So the child begins to think of himself as the center, and everything just goes on around him, for him. The whole existence seems to be created for him. The whole existence was waiting for him to come and demand. And everything will be fulfilled. This is a necessity, that his demands should be fulfilled; otherwise he will die. But this necessity becomes very dangerous.
He grows up with this attitude that "I am the center." By and by he will demand more. A child's demands are very simple; they can be supplied. But as he will grow his demands will become more and more complex. Sometimes it will not be possible to supply them, to fulfill them. Sometimes it may be absolutely impossible. He may demand the moon, or anything....

The more he will grow, the more the demands will become complex, impossible. Then frustration sets in, and the child begins to think that now he is being deceived. He has taken it for granted that he was the center of the world. Now problems will be there, and by and by he will be dethroned. When he becomes an adult, he will be completely dethroned. Then he will know that he is not the center. But deep down the unconscious mind goes on thinking in terms of him being the center.

People come and ask me whether their fate is determined. They are asking whether they are so important, so significant for this universe that their fate must be determined beforehand. "What is my purpose?" they ask. "Why was I created?" This childhood nonsense that you are the center creates these questions like, "For what purpose am I created?"

You are not created for any purpose. And it is good that you are not created for any purpose; otherwise you would be a machine. A machine is created for some purpose. Man is not created for some purpose, for something -- no! Man is just the outflowing, overflowing creation. Everything simply is. Flowers are there and stars are there and you are there. Everything is just an overflowing, a joy, a celebration of existence without any purpose.

But this theory of fate, of predetermination, is what creates problems, because we take it as a theory. We think that everything is determined, but nothing is determined. However, this technique uses this as a device. When we say everything is determined, this is not said to you as a theory. The purpose is this: that if you take life as a drama, predetermined, then it becomes a dream. For example, if I knew that this day, this night, I was going to talk to you, and it is predetermined what words I should speak on this day, and if it is so fixed that nothing can be changed -- that I cannot utter a single new word -- then suddenly I am not related at all with this whole process because then I am not the source of action.

If everything is determined and if every word is to be spoken by the universe itself or by the divine or by whatsoever name you choose, then I am no more the source of it. Then I can become an observer -- a simple observer.

If you take life as predetermined then you can observe it, then you are not involved. If you are a failure, it was predetermined; if you are a success, it was predetermined. If both are predetermined, both become of equal value -- synonymous.

Then one is Ravan, one is Ram, and everything is predetermined. Ravan need not feel guilty, Ram need not feel superior. Everything is predetermined, so you are just actors, you are just on a stage playing a role.

To give you the feeling that you are playing a role, to give you the feeling that this is only a predetermined pattern that you are fulfilling, to give you this feeling so that you can transcend it, this is the device. It is very difficult because we are so much accustomed to thinking of fate as a theory -- not only as a theory, but as a law. We cannot understand this attitude of taking these laws and theories as devices.

I will explain this to you. One example will be helpful. I was in a city. One man came; he was a Mohammedan, but I didn't know, I was not aware. And he was dressed so that he looked like a Hindu. He not only looked like a Hindu, but he talked as if he was of the Hindu type. He was not a Mohammedan type.

He asked me one question. He said, "Mohammedans and Christians say that there is only one life. Hindus, Buddhists and Jains say there are many lives -- a long sequence of lives, so that unless one is liberated one goes on and on being reborn again and again. So what do you say? If Jesus was an enlightened man, he must have known. Or Mohammed, or Moses, they must have known too if they were enlightened men that there are many lives and not just one. And if you say that they are right, then what about Mahavir, Krishna, Buddha and Shankara? One thing is certain, that they cannot all be enlightened.

"If Christianity is right then Buddha is wrong, then Krishna is wrong, then Mahavir is wrong. And if Mahavir, Krishna and Buddha are right, then Mohammed, Jesus and Moses are wrong. So tell me. I am very much puzzled; I am in a mess, confused. And both cannot be right. How can both be right? Either there are many lives or there is one. How can both be right?" He was a very intelligent man, and he had studied many things, so he said, "You cannot just escape and say that both are right. Both cannot be right. It is logically so -- both cannot be right."

But I said, "This need not be; your approach is absolutely wrong. Both are devices. Neither is right, neither is wrong -- both are devices." It became impossible for him to understand what I meant by a device.

Mohammed, Jesus and Moses, they were talking to one type of mind, and Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, they were talking to a very different type of mind. There are really two source religions -- the Hindu and the Jewish. So all the religions born out of India, all the religions born out of Hinduism believe in rebirth, in many births; and all the religions born out of Jewish thinking -- Mohammedanism, Christianity -- they believe in one life. These are two devices.

Try to understand it. Because our minds are fixed, we take things as theories, not as devices. So many times people come to me and say, "One day you said this is right, and another day you said that is right, and both cannot be right." Of course both cannot be right, but no one is saying that both are right. I am not concerned at all with which is right and which is wrong. I am only concerned with which device works.

In India they use this device of many lives. Why? There are many points. All the religions born in the West, particularly out of Jewish thinking, were religions of poor people. Their prophets were uneducated. Jesus was not educated, Mohammed was not educated, Moses was not. They were all uneducated, unsophisticated, simple, and they were talking with masses who were not sophisticated at all, who were poor; they were not rich.

For a poor man, one life is more than enough, more than enough! He is starving, dying. If you say to him that there are so many lives, that he will go on being reborn and reborn, that he will move in a wheel of a thousand and one lives, the poor man will just feel frustrated about the whole thing. "What are you saying?" a poor man will ask. "One life is too much, so do not talk of a thousand and one lives, of a million lives. Do not speak this. Give us heaven immediately after this life." God becomes a reality only if he can be achieved after this life -- immediately.

Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, were talking to a very rich society. Today it has become difficult to understand because the whole wheel has turned. Now the West is rich and the East is poor. Then the West was poor and the East was rich. All the Hindu avatars, all the TIRTHANKARAS -- world teachers -- of the Jains, all the buddhas -- awakened ones -- they were all princes. They belonged to royal families. They were cultured, educated, sophisticated, refined in every way. You cannot refine Buddha more. He was absolutely refined, cultured, educated; nothing can be added. Even if Buddha comes today, nothing can be added.

So they were talking to a society which was rich. Remember, for a rich society there are different problems. For a rich society, pleasure is meaningless, heaven is meaningless. For a poor society, heaven is very meaningful. If the society is living in heaven, heaven becomes meaningless, so you cannot propose this. You cannot create an urge to do something for heaven; they are already in it -- and bored.

So Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, do not talk about heaven, they talk of freedom. They do not talk of a pleasant world beyond, they talk of a transcendental world where there is neither pain nor pleasure. Jesus' heaven would not have appealed to them -- they were already in it.

And secondly, for a rich man the real problem is boredom. For a poor man, promise him pleasure in the future. For a poor man, suffering is the problem. For a rich man, suffering is not the problem; for a rich man, boredom is the problem. He is bored of all pleasures.

Mahavir, Buddha and Krishna, all used this boredom, and they said, "If you do not do anything you are going to be born again and again. This wheel will move. Remember, the same life will be repeated. The same sex, the same richness, the same food, the same palaces again and again: a thousand and one times you will be moving in a wheel."

To a rich man who has known all pleasures this is not a good prospect, this repetition. Repetition is the problem. That is the suffering for him. He wants something new, and Mahavir and Buddha say, "There is nothing new. This world is old. Nothing is new under the heavens, everything is just old. You have tasted all these things before and you will go on tasting them. You are in a wheel, moving. Go beyond it, take a jump out of the wheel."

For a rich man, if you create a device which intensifies his feeling of boredom, only then can he move toward meditation. For a poor man, if you talk about boredom you are saying meaningless things. A poor man is never bored -- never! Only a rich man is bored. A poor man is never bored; he is always thinking of the future. Something is going to happen and everything will be okay.

The poor man needs a promise, but if the promise is a very long way away it becomes meaningless. It must be immediate.
Jesus is reported to have said that "In my lifetime, in your lifetime, you will see the kingdom of God." That statement has haunted the whole of Christianity for twenty centuries, because Jesus said, "In YOUR life, immediately, you are going to see the kingdom of God." And the kingdom of God has not come even yet, so what did he mean? And he said, "The world is going to end soon, so do not waste time! Time is short." Jesus said, "Time is very short. It is foolish to waste it. Immediately the world is going to end and you will have to answer for yourself, so repent."

Jesus created a feeling of immediacy through the concept of one life. He knew, and Buddha and Mahavir also knew. Whatsoever they knew is not told. Whatsoever they devised is known. This was a device to create immediacy, urgency, so that you would begin to act.

India was an old country, rich. There was no question of urgency in promises for the future. There was only one way possible to create urgency, and that was to create more boredom. If a man feels he is going to be born again and again, again and again, infinitely, ad infinitum, he immediately comes and asks, "How to be freed from this wheel? This is too much. Now I cannot continue it any more because whatsoever can be known I have known. If this is to be repeated it is a nightmare. I do not want to repeat it, I want something new."

So Buddha and Mahavir say, "There is nothing new under the sky. Everything is old and a repetition. And you have repeated for many, many lives, and you will go on repeating for many, many lives. Beware of the repetition, beware of your boredom. Take a jump."

The device is different, but the purpose is the same. Take a jump! Move! Transform yourself! Whatsoever you are, transform yourself from it.

If we take religious statements as devices then there is no contradiction. Then Jesus and Krishna, Mohammed and Mahavir, mean the same thing. They create different routes for different people, different techniques for different minds, different appeals for different attitudes. But those are not principles to be fought and argued about. They are devices to be used, transcended, and thrown.

This much for today.

8Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #7 周二 1月 31, 2012 6:22 pm

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #7


Chapter title: Techniques to put you at ease
7 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210075
ShortTitle: VBT107
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 94 mins

10. WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESS AS EVERLASTING LIFE.
11. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN.
12. WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND.


Man has a center, but he lives off of it -- off the center. That creates an inner tension, a constant turmoil, anguish. You are not where you should be; you are not at your right balance. You are off balance, and this being off balance, off center, is the base of all mental tensions. If it becomes too much, you go mad. A madman is one who has gone out of himself completely. The enlightened man is just the reverse of the madman. He is centered in himself.

You are in between. You have not gone completely out of yourself, and you are not at your center either. You just move in the gap. Sometimes you move very, very far away, so you have moments when you are temporarily mad. In anger, in sex, in anything in which you have moved too far away from yourself, you are temporarily mad. Then there is no difference between you and the madman. The difference is only that he is permanently there and you are temporarily there. You will come back.

When you are in anger it is madness, but it is not permanent. Qualitatively there is no difference; quantitatively there is a difference. The quality is the same, so sometimes you touch madness and sometimes, when you are relaxed, totally at ease, you touch your center also. Those are the blissful moments. They happen. Then you are just like a Buddha or like a Krishna, but only temporarily, momentarily. You will not stay there. Really, the moment you realize that you are blissful you have moved. It is so momentary that by the time you have recognized the bliss it is finished.

We go on moving between these two, but this movement is dangerous. This movement is dangerous because then you cannot create a self-image, a fixed self-image. You do not know who you are. If you constantly move from madness to being centered in yourself, if this movement is constant, you cannot have a solid image of yourself. You will have a liquid image. Then you do not know who you are. It is very difficult. That is why you even become afraid if you are expecting blissful moments, so you try to fix yourself somewhere in between.

This is what we mean by a normal human being: he never touches his madness in anger and he never touches that total freedom, that ecstasy, either. He never moves from a solid image. The normal man is really a dead man, living between these two points. That is why all those who are exceptional -- great artists, painters, poets -- they are not normal. They are very liquid. Sometimes they touch the center, sometimes they go mad. They move fast between these two. Of course, their anguish is great, their tension is much. They have to live between two worlds, constantly changing themselves. That is why they feel that they have no identity. They feel, in the words of Colin Wilson, that they are outsiders. In your world of normality, they are outsiders.

It will be helpful to define these four types. First is the normal man who has a fixed, solid identity, who knows who he is -- a doctor, an engineer, a professor, a saint -- who knows who he is and never moves from there. He constantly clings to the identity, to the image.

Second are those who have liquid images -- poets, artists, painters, singers. They do not know who they are. Sometimes they become just normal, sometimes they go mad, sometimes they touch the ecstasy that a buddha touches.
Third are those who are permanently mad. They have gone outside themselves; they never come back into their home. They do not even remember that they have a home.

And fourth are those who have reached their home... Buddha, Christ, Krishna.

This fourth category -- those who have reached their home -- is totally relaxed. In their consciousness there is no tension, no effort, no desire. In one word, there is no becoming. They do not want to become anything. They are, they have been. No becoming! And they are at ease with their being. Whatsoever they are, they are at ease with it. They do not want to change it, do not want to go anywhere. They have no future. This very moment is eternity for them... no longing, no desire. That does not mean that a buddha will not eat or a buddha will not sleep. He will eat, he will sleep, but these are not desires. A buddha will not project these desires: he will not eat tomorrow, he will eat today.

Remember this. You go on eating in the tomorrow, you go on eating in the future; you go on eating in the past, in the yesterday. It rarely happens that you eat today. While you are eating today, your mind will be moving somewhere else. While you will be trying to go to sleep, you will start eating tomorrow, or else the memory of the past will come.

A buddha eats today. This very moment he lives. He does not project his life into the future; there is no future for him. Whenever future comes, it comes as the present. It is always today, it is always now. So a buddha eats, but he never eats in the mind -- remember this. There is no cerebral eating. You go on eating in the mind. It is absurd because the mind is not meant for eating. All your centers are confused; your entire body-mind arrangement is mixed up, it is mad.

A buddha eats, but he never thinks of eating. And that applies to everything. So a buddha is as ordinary as you while he is eating. Do not think that a buddha is not going to eat, or that when the hot sun is there he is not going to perspire, or when cold winds come he will not feel cold. He will feel it, but he will feel always in the present, never in the future. There is no becoming. If there is no becoming there is no tension. Understand this very clearly. If there is no becoming, how can there be any tension? Tension means you want to be something else which you are not.

You are A and you want to be B; you are poor and you want to be a rich man; you are ugly and you want to be beautiful; or you are stupid and you want to be a wise man. Whatsoever the wanting, whatsoever the desire, the form is always this: A wants to become B. Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. For contentment something else is needed -- that is the constant structure of a mind that is desiring. When you get it, again the mind will say that "This is not enough, something else is needed."

The mind always moves on and on. Whatsoever you get becomes useless. The moment you get it, it is useless. This is desire. Buddha has called it TRISHNA: this is becoming.

You move from one life to another, from one world to another, and this goes on. It can continue ad infinitum. There is no end to it, there is no end to desire, desiring. But if there is no becoming, if you accept totally whatsoever you are -- ugly or beautiful, wise or stupid, rich or poor -- whatsoever you are, if you accept it in its totality, becoming ceases. Then there is no tension; then the tension cannot exist. Then there is no anguish. You are at ease, you are not worried. This non-becoming mind is a mind that is centered in the self.

On quite the opposite pole is the madman. He has no being, he is only a becoming. He has forgotten what he is. The A is forgotten completely and he is trying to be B. He no longer knows who he is; he only knows his desired goal. He doesn't live here and now, he lives somewhere else. That is why he looks crazy to us, mad, because you live in this world and he lives in the world of his dreams. He is not part of your world, he is living somewhere else. He has completely forgotten his reality here and now. And with himself he has forgotten the world around him, which is real. He lives in an unreal world -- for him, that is the only reality.

A buddha lives this very moment in the being and the madman is just the opposite. He never lives in the here and now, in the being, but always in the becoming -- somewhere on the horizon. These are the two polar opposites.
So remember, the madman is not against you, he is against the buddha. And remember also, the buddha is not against you, he is against the madman. You are in between. You are both, mixed; you have madnesses, you have moments of enlightenment, but both are mixed.

Sometimes a glimpse into the center suddenly happens, if you are relaxed. There are moments when you are relaxed. You are in love: for a few moments, for a single moment, your lover, your beloved is with you. It has been a long desire, a long effort, and at last your beloved is with you. For a moment the mind goes off. There has been a long effort to be with the beloved. The mind has been hankering and hankering and hankering, and the mind has always been thinking, thinking about the beloved. Now the beloved is there and suddenly the mind cannot think. The old process cannot be continued. You were asking for the beloved; now the beloved is there, so the mind simply stops.

In that moment when the beloved is there, there is no desire. You are relaxed; suddenly you are thrown back to yourself. Unless a lover can throw you to yourself it is not love. Unless you become yourself in the presence of the beloved, it is not love. Unless mind completely ceases to function in the presence of the lover or the beloved, it is not love.
Sometimes it happens that mind ceases and for a moment there is no desire. Love is desireless. Try to understand this: you may desire love, but love is desireless. When love happens there is no desire; mind is quiet, calm, relaxed. No more becoming, nowhere to go.

But this happens only for a few moments, if it happens at all. If you have really loved someone, then it will happen for a few moments. It is a shock. The mind cannot work because its whole function has become useless, absurd. The one for whom you were longing is there, and the mind cannot think what to do now.

For a few moments the whole mechanism stops. You are relaxed in yourself. You have touched your being, your center, and you feel you are at the source of well-being. A bliss fills you, a fragrance surrounds you. Suddenly you are not the same man you were.

That is why love transforms so much. If you are in love you cannot hide it. That is impossible! If you are in love, it will show. Your eyes, your face, the way you walk, the way you sit, everything will show it, because you are not the same man. The desiring mind is not there. You are like a buddha just for a few moments. This cannot be continued for long because it is just a shock. Immediately the mind will try to find some ways and excuses to think again.

For example, the mind may start thinking you have attained your goal, you have attained your love, so now what? What are you going to do? Then the prophesying starts, the arguments start. You begin thinking, "Today I have reached my beloved, but will it be the same tomorrow also?" The mind has started working. And the moment mind is working you have moved again into becoming.

Sometimes even without love, just through fatigue, tiredness, one stops desiring. Then too one is thrown to oneself. When you are not away from yourself you are bound to be at your self, no matter what may be the cause of it. When one is tired totally, fatigued, when one does not even feel like thinking or desiring, when one is frustrated completely, without any hope, then suddenly one feels at home. Now he cannot go anywhere. All the doors are closed; hope has disappeared -- and with it desire, with it becoming.

It will not be for long because your mind has a mechanism. It can go off for a few moments, but suddenly it will come alive again because you cannot exist hopelessly, you will have to find some hope. You cannot exist without desire. Because you do not know how to exist without desire, you will have to create some desire.

In any situation where it happens that suddenly the mind ceases functioning, you are at your center. You are on a holiday, in a forest or at a hill station, or on a beach: suddenly your routine mind will not work. The office is not there, the wife is not there, or the husband is not there. Suddenly there is a very new situation, and the mind will need some time to function in it, to be adjusted to it. The mind feels unadjusted. The situation is so new that you relax, and you are at your center.

In these moments you become a buddha, but these will only be moments. Then they will haunt you, and then you would like to reproduce them again and again and repeat them. But remember, they happened spontaneously, so you cannot repeat them. And the more you try to repeat them, the more it will be impossible for them to come to you.

That is happening to everyone. You loved someone, and in the first meeting your mind ceased for a few moments. Then you got married. Why did you get married? To repeat those beautiful moments again and again. But when they happened you were not married, and they cannot happen in marriage because the whole situation is different. When two people meet for the first time, the whole situation is new. Their minds cannot function in it. They are so overwhelmed by it -- so filled by the new experience, by the new life, the new flowering! Then the mind starts functioning and they think. "This is such a beautiful moment! I want to go on repeating it every day, so I should get married."

Mind will destroy everything. Marriage means mind. Love is spontaneous; marriage is calculating. Getting married is a mathematical thing. Then you wait for those moments, but they will never come again. That is why every married man and woman is frustrated -- because they are waiting for certain things that happened in the past. Why are they not happening again? They cannot happen because you are missing the whole situation. Now you are not new; now there is no spontaneity; now love is a routine. Now everything is expected and demanded. Now love has become a duty, not a fun. It was fun in the beginning; now it is a duty. And duty cannot give you the same bliss that fun can give. It is impossible! Your mind has created the whole thing. Now you go on expecting, and the more you expect the less is the possibility of its happening.

This happens everywhere, not only in marriage. You go to a master and the experience is new. His presence, his words, his way of life are new. Suddenly your mind stops functioning. Then you think, "This is the man for me, so I must go every day." Then you get married to him. By and by frustration sets in because you have made it a duty, a routine. Now those same experiences will not be coming. Then you think this man has deceived you or that you were fooled somehow. Then you think, "The first experience was hallucinatory. I must have been hypnotized or something. It was not real."

It was real. Your routine mind makes it unreal. And then the mind tries to expect, but the first time it happened you were not expecting. You had come without any expectations, you were just open to receive whatsoever was happening.

Now you come every day with expectations, with a closed mind. It cannot happen. It always happens in an open mind; it always happens in a new situation. That doesn't mean that you have to change your situation daily, it only means: do not allow your mind to create a pattern. Then your wife will be new every day, your husband will be new every day. But do not allow the mind to create a pattern of expectations; do not allow the mind to move in the future. Then your master will be every day new, your friend will be every day new. And everything is new in the world except the mind. Mind is the only thing which is old. It is always old.

The sun is rising anew every day. It is not the old sun. The moon is new; the day, the night, the flowers, the trees... everything is new except your mind. Your mind is always old -- remember, always -- because mind needs the past, the accumulated experience, the projected experience. Mind needs the past and life needs the present. Life is always blissful -- mind never is. Whenever you allow your mind to come in, misery sets in.

These spontaneous moments will not be repeated again, so what to do? How to be in a relaxed state continuously? These three sutras are for this. These are three techniques concerning the feeling of ease, techniques to relax the nerves.

How to remain in the being? How not to move into the becoming? It is difficult, arduous, but these techniques can help. These techniques will throw you upon yourself.

The first technique: WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. Shiva starts with love. The first technique is concerned with love, because love is the nearest thing in your experience in which you are relaxed. If you cannot love, it is impossible for you to relax. If you can relax, your life will become a loving life.

A tense man cannot love. Why? A tense man always lives with purposes. He can earn money, but he cannot love because love is purposeless. Love is not a commodity. You cannot accumulate it; you cannot make a bank balance of it; you cannot strengthen your ego out of it. Really, love is the most absurd act, with no meaning beyond it, no purpose beyond it. It exists in itself, not for anything else.

You earn money FOR something -- it is a means. You build a house for someone to live in -- it is a means. Love is not a means. Why do you love? For what do you love? Love is the end in itself. That is why a mind that is calculative, logical, a mind that thinks in terms of purpose, cannot love. And the mind that always thinks in terms of purpose will be tense, because purpose can only be fulfilled in the future, never here and now.

You are building a house -- you cannot live in it just now, you will have to build it first. You can live in it in the future, not now. You earn money -- the bank balance will be created in the future, not now. Means you will have to use now, and ends will come in the future.

Love is always here; there is no future to it. That is why love is so near to meditation. That is why death is also so near to meditation -- because death is also always here and now, it can never happen in the future. Can you die in the future? You can die only in the present. No one has ever died in the future. How can you die in the future? Or how can you die in the past? The past has gone, it is no more, so you cannot die in it. The future has not yet come, so how can you die in it?

Death always occurs in the present. Death, love, meditation -- they all occur in the present. So if you are afraid of death, you cannot love. If you are afraid of love, you cannot meditate. If you are afraid of meditation, your life will be useless. Useless not in the sense of any purpose, but useless in the sense that you will never be able to feel any bliss in it. It will be futile.
It may seem strange to connect these three: love, meditation, death. It is not! They are similar experiences. So if you can enter in one, you can enter in the remaining two.

Shiva starts with love. He says, WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. What does it mean? Many things! One: while you are being loved the past has ceased, the future is not. You move in the dimension of the present. You move in THE NOW. Have you ever loved someone? If you have ever loved, then you know that the mind is no longer there.

That is why the so-called wise men say that lovers are blind, mindless, mad. In essence what they say is right. Lovers ARE blind because they have no eyes for the future, to calculate what they are going to do. They are blind; they cannot see the past. What has happened to lovers? They just move here and now without any consideration of past or future, without any consideration of consequences. That is why they are called blind. They are! They are blind for those who are calculating, and they are seers for those who are not calculating. Those who are not calculating will see love as the real eye, the real vision.

So the first thing: in the moment of love, past and future are no more. Then, one delicate point is to be understood. When there is no past and no future, can you call this moment the present? It is the present only between the two -- between the past and the future. It is relative. If there is no past and no future, what does it mean to call it the present? It is meaningless. That is why Shiva doesn't use the word `present'. He says, EVERLASTING LIFE. He means eternity... enter eternity.

We divide time into three parts -- past, present, future. That division is false, absolutely false. Time is really past and future. The present is not part of time. The present is part of eternity. That which has passed is time; that which is to come is time. That which is, is not time because it never passes -- it is always here. The now is always here. It is ALWAYS here!
This now is eternal.

If you move from the past, you never move into the present. From the past you always move into the future; there comes no moment which is present. From the past you always move into the future. From the present you can never move into the future. From the present you go deeper and deeper, into more present and more present. This is everlasting life.

We may say it in this way: from past to future is time. Time means you move on a plane, on a straight line. Or we may call it horizontal. The moment you are in the present the dimension changes: you move vertically -- up or down, toward the height or toward the depth. But then you never move horizontally. A Buddha, a Shiva, live in eternity, not in time.

Jesus was asked, "What will happen in your kingdom of God?" The man who asked him was not asking about time. He was asking about what is going to happen to his desires, about how they will be fulfilled. He was asking whether there will be life everlasting or whether there will be death; whether there be any misery, whether there will be inferior and superior men. He was asking things of this world when he asked, "What is going to happen in your kingdom of God?" And Jesus replied -- the reply is like that of a Zen monk -- "There shall be time no longer."

The man who was replied to in this way may not have understood at all: "There shall be time no longer." Only this one thing Jesus said -- "There shall be time no longer," because time is horizontal and the kingdom of God is vertical... it is eternal. It is always here! You have only to move away from time to enter into it.

So love is the first door. Through it, you can move away from time. That is why everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to love. And no one knows why so much significance is given to love, why there is such a deep longing for love. And unless you know it rightly, you can neither love nor be loved, because love is one of the deepest phenomena upon this earth.

We go on thinking that everyone is capable of love as he is. This is not the case -- it is not so. That is why you are frustrated. Love is a different dimension, and if you try to love someone in time you will be defeated in your effort. In time, love is not possible.

I remember one anecdote. Meera was in love with Krishna. She was a housewife -- the wife of a prince. The prince became jealous of Krishna. Krishna was no more; Krishna was not present, Krishna was not a physical body. There was a gap of five thousand years between Krishna's physical existence and Meera's physical existence. So really, how can Meera be in love with Krishna? The time gap was so great.

One day the prince, her husband, asked Meera, "You go on talking about your love, you go on dancing and singing around Krishna, but where is he? With whom are you so much in love? With whom are you talking continuously?" Meera was talking with Krishna, singing, laughing, fighting. She looked mad -- she was, in our eyes. The prince said, "Have you gone mad? Where is your Krishna? Whom are you loving? With whom are you conversing? I am here, and you have completely forgotten me."

Meera said, "Krishna is here -- you are not here -- because Krishna is eternal; you are not. He will always be here, he was always here, he is here. You will not be here; you were not here. You were not here one day, you will not be here another day, so how can I believe that between these two non-existences you are here? How is an existence possible between two non-existences?"

The prince is in time, but Krishna is in eternity. So you can be near the prince, but the distance cannot be destroyed. You will be distant. You may be very, very distant in time from Krishna, but you can be near. It is a different dimension, however.
I look in front of me and there is a wall; I move my eyes and there is a sky. When you look in time there is always a wall. When you look beyond time there is the open sky... infinite. Love opens the infinity, the everlastingness of existence. So really, if you have ever loved, love can be made a technique of meditation. This is the technique: WHILE BEING LOVED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER LOVING AS EVERLASTING LIFE.

Do not be a lover standing aloof, outside. Become loving and move into eternity. When you are loving someone, are you there as the lover? If you are there, then you are in time and love is just false, just pseudo. If you are still there and you can say, "I am," then you can be physically near but spiritually you are poles apart.

While in love, YOU must not be -- only love, only loving. Become loving. While caressing your lover or beloved become the caress. While kissing, do not be the kisser or the kissed -- be the kiss. Forget the ego completely, dissolve it into the act. Move into the act so deeply that the actor is no more. And if you cannot move into love, it is difficult to move into eating or walking -- very difficult, because love is the easiest approach for dissolving the ego. That is why those who are egoists cannot
love. They may talk about it, they may sing about it, they may write about it, but they cannot love. The ego cannot love!

Shiva says, become loving. When you are in the embrace, become the embrace, become the kiss. Forget yourself so totally that you can say, "I am no more. Only love exists." Then the heart is not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is circulating. And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, love is moving to touch.

Become love and enter everlasting life. Love suddenly changes your dimension. You are thrown out of time and you are facing eternity. Love can become a deep meditation -- the deepest possible. Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known. And lovers have touched that center which many yogis have missed. But it will be just a glimpse unless you transform your love into meditation. Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation. And now you can understand why tantra talks so much about love and sex. Why? Because love is the easiest natural door from where you can transcend this world, this horizontal dimension.

Look at Shiva with his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don't seem to be two -- they are one. The oneness is so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the Shivalinga. It is a phallic symbol -- Shiva's sex organ -- but it is not alone, it is based in Devi's vagina. The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a Shivalinga you never remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have tried to forget it completely.

Jung remembers in his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny incident. He came to India and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are many, many Shivalingas, many phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around explained everything to him except the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was difficult to escape this. Jung was well aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on asking, "But what are these?" So the pundit at last said into his ear, in Jung's ear, "Do not ask me here, I will tell you afterwards. This is a private thing."

Jung must have laughed inside -- these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple the pundit came near and said, "It was not good of you to ask before others. I will tell you now. It is a secret." And then again in Jung's ear he said, "They are our private parts."

When Jung went back, he met one great scholar -- a scholar of oriental thought, mythology, philosophy -- Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer was one of the most gifted minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a lover of India and of its ways of thinking -- of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach toward life. When he heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, "This is good for a change. I have always heard about great Indians -- Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you relate says something not about any great Indians, but about Indians."

Love for Shiva is the great gate. And for him sex is not something to be condemned. For him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you condemn the seed you condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love then it is crippled. Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must become love. If it is not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault.

Sex must not remain sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While loving, be love -- simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else's -- it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy.

D. H. Lawrence, one of the most creative minds of this age, was knowingly or unknowingly a tantra adept. He was condemned in the West completely, his books were banned. There were many cases in the courts only because he had said, "Sex energy is the only energy, and if you condemn it and suppress it you are against the universe. Then you will never be capable of knowing the higher flowering of this energy. And when it is suppressed it becomes ugly -- this is the vicious circle."

Priests, moralists, so-called religious people -- popes, shankaracharyas and others -- they go on condemning sex. They say that this is an ugly thing. And when you suppress it, it becomes ugly. So they say, "Look! What we said is true. It is proved by you. Look! Whatsoever you are doing is ugly and you know it is ugly."

But it is not sex which is ugly, it is these priests who have made it ugly. Once they have made it ugly they are proved right. And when they are proved right you go on making it more and more ugly.

Sex is innocent energy -- life flowing in you, existence alive in you. Do not cripple it! Allow it to move toward the heights. That is, sex must become love. What is the difference? When your mind is sexual you are exploiting the other; the other is just an instrument to be used and thrown away. When sex becomes love the other is not an instrument, the other is not to be exploited; the other is not really the other. When you love, it is not self-centered. Rather, the other becomes significant, unique.

It is not that you are exploiting him -- no! On the contrary, you both are joined in a deep experience. You are partners of a deep experience, not the exploiter and the exploited. You are helping each other to move into a different world of love. Sex is exploitation. Love is moving together into a different world.

If this moving is not momentary and if this moving becomes meditative -- that is, if you can forget yourself completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only love flowing -- then, says Shiva, everlasting life is yours.

The second technique:

STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN.

This looks very simple, but it is not so simple. I will read it again: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This is only an example; anything will do. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT, and then -- THEN -- the thing will happen. What is Shiva saying?

You have a thorn in your foot -- it is painful, you are suffering. Or one ant is there creeping on your leg. You feel the creeping and suddenly you want it to be thrown away. Take any experience! You have a wound -- it is painful. You have a headache, or any pain in the body. Anything will do as an object. It is only an example -- the CREEPING OF AN ANT. Shiva says: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. Whatsoever you are feeling, stop all the doors of the senses.

What is to be done? Close your eyes and think that you are just blind and you cannot see. Close your ears and think that you cannot hear. With all of the five senses, you just close them. How can you close them? It is easy. Stop breathing for a single moment: all your senses will be closed. When the breath has stopped and all the senses are closed, where is this creeping? Where is the ant? Suddenly you are removed -- far away.

One of my friends, an old friend, very aged, fell down the staircase, and doctors said that now he would not be able to move from his bed for three months, he would have to rest for three months. And he was a very restless man; it was difficult for him. I went to see him, so he said, "Pray for me and bless me so that I may die, because these three months are more than death. I cannot remain stone-like. And others are saying, `Don't move.'"

I told him, "This is a good opportunity. Just close your eyes and think that you are only a stone, you cannot move. How can you move? You are a stone -- just a stone, a statue. Close your eyes. Feel that you are now a stone, a statue." He asked me what will happen. I told him, "Just try. I am sitting here, and nothing can be done. Nothing can be done! You will have to be here for three months anyhow, so try."

He would have never tried, but the situation was so impossible that he said, "Okay! I will try because something may happen. But I don't believe it," he said. "I don't believe that something can happen just by thinking that I am stone-like, dead like a statue, but I will try." So he tried.

I was also not thinking that something was going to happen, because the man was such. But sometimes when you are in an impossible situation, hopeless, things begin to happen. He closed his eyes. I waited, because I was thinking that within two or three minutes he would open them and he would say, "Nothing happened." But he would not open his eyes, and thirty minutes passed. I could feel and see that he had become a statue. All the tension on his forehead disappeared. His face was changed.
I had to leave, but he would not open his eyes. And he was so silent, as if dead. His breathing calmed down, and because I had to leave, I had to tell him, "I want to go now, so please open your eyes and tell me what has happened."

He opened his eyes a different man. And he said, "This is a miracle. What have you done to me?"

I told him, "I have not done anything at all."
He said, "You must have done something because this is a miracle. When I began to think that I am just like a stone, like a statue, suddenly the feeling came to me that even if I wanted to move my hands it was impossible to do so. I wanted so many times to open my eyes, but they were like stone so I couldn't open them."

He said, "I even became worried about what you will be thinking, as it was so long, but what could I do? I couldn't move myself for these thirty minutes. And when every movement ceased, suddenly the world disappeared and I was alone, deep down in me, myself. Then the pain disappeared."

There was severe pain; he could not sleep in the night without a tranquilizer. But the pain disappeared. I asked him how he felt when the pain was disappearing. He said, "First I began to feel that it was somewhere distant. The pain was there, but very far away as if happening to someone else. And then by and by, by and by, as if someone is going away and away and you cannot see him, it disappeared. The pain disappeared! For at least ten minutes, the pain was no more. How can a stone body have pain?"

This sutra says, STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES. Become stone-like, closed to the world. When you are closed to the world, really, you are closed to your own body also, because your body is not part of you; it is part of the world. When you are closed completely to the world, you are closed to your own body also. Then, Shiva says, then the thing will happen.

So try it with the body. Anything will do, you will not need some ant creeping on you. Otherwise you will think, "When the ant will creep, I will meditate." And such helpful ants are difficult to find, so anything will do. You are lying on your bed, you feel the cold sheets -- become dead. Suddenly the sheets will go away, away, away, and they will disappear. Your bed will disappear; your bedroom will disappear; the whole world will disappear. You are closed, dead, a stone, like a Leibnitzian monad with no window outside -- no window! You cannot move!

And then, when you cannot move, you are thrown back to yourself, you are centered in yourself. Then, for the first time you can look from your center. And once you can look from your center, you can never be the same man again.

The third technique: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. You are sitting here. Just feel that you have become weightless, there is no weight. You will feel that somewhere or other there is weight, but go on feeling the weightlessness. It comes. A moment comes when you feel that you are weightless, that there is no weight. When there is no weight you are no more a body, because the weight is of the body -- not of you. You are weightless.

That is why there were so many experiments done. Someone is dying... many scientists all over the world have tried to weigh the person. If there is a slight difference, if when a man is alive the weight is more and when a man is dead the weight is less, then scientists can say that something has moved from the body, that a soul or the self or something that was there is no more -- because for science nothing can be weightless, nothing!

Weight is basic to all matter. Even sunrays have weight. It is very, very slight, minute, and they are difficult to weigh, but scientists have weighed them. If you can collect all the sunrays on a five-square-mile plot of ground, their weight will be similar to that of a hair. But sunrays do have weight; they have been weighed. Nothing can be weightless for science. And if something can be weightless then it is immaterial, it cannot be matter. And science has believed for these twenty or twenty-five years that there is nothing except matter.

So when a man dies, if something leaves the body the weight must differ. But it never differs; the weight remains the same. Sometimes it even becomes more -- that is the problem. The alive man weighs less; the dead man becomes more weighty. That created new problems, because they were really trying to find out if some weight is lost; then they can say something has left. But it seems that, on the contrary, something has come in. What has happened? Weight is material, but you are not a weight. You are immaterial.

If you try this technique of weightlessness, you just have to conceive of yourself as weightless -- and not only conceive, but feel that your body has become weightless. If you go on feeling, feeling, feeling, a moment comes when suddenly you realize that you are weightless. You are already, so you can realize it anytime. You have only to create a situation in which you can feel again that you are weightless.

You have to dehypnotize yourself. This is the hypnosis, the belief that "I am a body and that is why I feel weight." If you can dehypnotize yourself into realizing that you are not a body, you will not feel weight. And when you do not feel weight you are beyond mind, says Shiva: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. Then the thing can happen. The mind also has weight; everyone's mind has a different weight.

At one time there were some proposals that the weightier the mind, the more intelligent. And generally it is true, but not absolutely, because sometimes very great men had very small minds, and sometimes some stupid idiot's mind weighed very much. But generally it is true, because when you have a bigger mechanism of the mind it weighs more. The mind is also a weight, but your consciousness is weightless. To feel this consciousness, you have to feel weightlessness. So try it: walking, sitting, sleeping, you can try it.

Some observations.... Why does the dead body become more weighty sometimes? Because the moment the consciousness leaves the body, the body becomes unprotected. Many things can enter it immediately. They were not entering because of you. Many vibrations can enter into a dead body -- they cannot enter into you. You are there, the body is alive, resistant to many things. That is why once you are ill, it begins to be a long sequence; one illness, then another, and then another -- because once you are ill you become unprotected, vulnerable, non-resistant. Then anything can enter into you. Your presence protects the body. So sometimes a dead body can gain weight. The moment you leave it, anything can enter into the body.

Secondly, when you are happy you always feel weightless; when you are sad you always feel more weight, as if something is pulling you down. The gravitation becomes much more. When you are sad, you are more weighty. When you are happy, you are light. You feel it. Why? Because when you are happy, whenever you feel a blissful moment, you forget the body completely. When you are sad, suffering, you cannot forget the body, you feel the weight of it. It pulls you down -- down to the earth, as if you are rooted. Then you cannot move; you have roots in the earth. In happiness you are weightless. In sorrow, sadness, you become weighty.

In deep meditation, when you forget your body completely, you can levitate. Even the body can go up with you. It happens many times. Scientists have been observing one woman in Bolivia. While meditating she goes up four feet, and now it has been observed scientifically; many films have been taken, many photographs. Before thousands and thousands of observers suddenly the woman goes up and gravity becomes nil, nullified. As of yet there is no explanation for what is happening, but that same woman cannot go up while not in meditation. And if her meditation is disturbed, suddenly she falls down.

What happens? Deep in meditation you forget your body completely, and the identification is broken. The body is a very small thing; you are very big, you have infinite power. The body has nothing in comparison to you.

It is as if an emperor has become identified with his slave, so as the slave goes begging, the emperor goes begging; as the slave weeps, the emperor weeps. When the slave says, "I am no one," the emperor says, "I am no one." Once the emperor recognizes his own being, once he recognizes that he is the emperor and this man is just a slave, everything will change suddenly.

You are infinite power identified with a very finite body. Once you realize your self, then weightlessness becomes more and the weight of the body less. Then you can levitate, the body can go up.

There are many, many stories which cannot yet be proven scientifically, but they will be proven... because if one woman can go up four feet, then there is no barrier. Another can go a thousand feet, another can go completely into the cosmos. Theoretically there is no problem: four feet or four hundred feet or four thousand feet, it makes no difference.

There are stories about Ram and about many others who have disappeared completely with the body. Their bodies were never found dead on this earth. Mohammed disappeared completely -- not only with his body; it is said he disappeared with his horse also. These stories look impossible, they look mythological, but they are not necessarily so.
Once you know the weightless force, you have become the master of gravity. You can use it; it depends on you. You can disappear completely with your body.

But to us weightlessness will be a problem. The technique of SIDDHASAN, the way Buddha sits, is the best way to be weightless. Sit on the earth -- not on any chair or anything, but just on the floor. And it is good if the floor is not of cement or anything artificial. Just sit on the ground so that you are the nearest to nature. It is good if you can sit naked. Just sit naked on the ground in the Buddha posture, siddhasan -- because siddhasan is the best posture in which to be weightless. Why? Because you feel more weight if your body is leaning this way or that way. Then your body has more area to be affected by gravity. If I am sitting on this chair then a greater area of my body is affected by gravity.

While you are standing less area is affected, but you cannot stand for too long. Mahavir always meditated standing -- always, because then one covers the least area. Just your feet are touching the ground. When you are standing on your feet, straight, the least amount of gravity works on you -- and gravity is weight.

Sitting in a Buddha posture, locked -- your legs are locked, your hands are locked -- also helps, because then your inner electricity becomes a circuit. Let your spine be straight.

Now you can understand why so much emphasis has been given to a straight spine, because with a straight spine less and less area is covered, so gravity affects you less. With closed eyes, balance yourself completely, center yourself. Lean to the right and feel the gravity; lean to the left and feel the gravity; lean forward and feel the gravity; lean backward and feel the gravity. Then find the center where the least pull of gravity is felt, the least weight is felt, and remain there. Then forget the body and feel that you are not weight -- you are weightless. Then go on feeling this weightlessness. Suddenly you become weightless; suddenly you are not the body; suddenly you are in a different world of bodilessness.

Weightlessness is bodilessness. Then you transcend mind also. Mind is also part of the body, part of matter. Matter has weight; you do not have any weight. This is the basis of this technique.
Try any technique, but stick to it for a few days so that you can feel whether it is working or not.

Enough for today.

9Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #8 周二 1月 31, 2012 6:43 pm

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #8

Chapter title: Total acceptance and non-division
8 October 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7210085
ShortTitle: VBT108
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 94 mins

Question 1

WHAT DOES TANTRA MEAN BY PURITY?

One of the things being asked about is: WHAT DOES TANTRA MEAN BY PURIFICATION OF THE MIND, PURITY OF THE MIND, AS A BASIC CONDITION TO FURTHER PROGRESS? Whatsoever is ordinarily meant by purity is not what is meant by tantra. Ordinarily, we divide everything into bad and good. The division may be for any reason. It may be hygienically, morally or in any other way, but we divide life into two -- good and bad. And ordinarily, whenever we say purity we mean goodness -- the "bad" qualities should not be allowed and the "good" qualities should be there. But for tantra this division of good and bad is meaningless. Tantra does not look at life through any dichotomy, any duality, any division. Then "What is meant by purity in tantra?" is a very relevant question.

If you ask a saint, he will say that anger is bad, sex is bad, greed is bad. If you ask Gurdjieff, he will say that negativity is bad, that whatsoever emotion is negative is bad and to be positive is good. If you ask Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians or Mohammedans, they may differ in their definition of good and bad -- but they have definitions. They call certain things bad and certain things good. So to define purity is not difficult for them. Whatsoever they take as good is pure, whatsoever they take as bad is impure.

But for tantra it is a deep problem. Tantra makes no superficial division between good and bad. Then what is purity? Tantra says that to divide is impure and to live in non-division is purity. So for tantra purity means innocence -- undifferentiated innocence.

A child is there; you call him pure. He gets angry, he has greed, so why do you call him pure? What is pure in childhood? Innocence! There is no division in the mind of a child. The child is unaware of any division into what is good and what is bad. That unawareness is the innocence. Even if he gets angry, he has no mind to be angry, it is a pure and simple act. It happens, and when anger goes, it goes. Nothing is left behind. The child is again the same, as if the anger has never been there. The purity is not touched; the purity is the same. So a child is pure because there is no mind.

The more mind grows, the more the child will become impure. Then anger will be there as a considered thing, not spontaneously. Then sometimes the child will suppress the anger -- if the situation does not permit it. And when anger becomes suppressed, then sometimes it will be transferred onto another situation instead. When there is really no need to be angry he will get angry, because the suppressed anger will need some outlet. Then everything will become impure because the mind has come in.

A child can be a thief in our eyes, but a child himself is never a thief because the very concept that things belong to individuals doesn't exist in his mind. If he takes your watch, your money, or anything, it is not a theft for him because the very notion that things belong to someone is non-existent. His theft is pure while even your non-theft is not pure -- the mind is there.

Tantra says that when someone becomes again like a child, he is pure. Of course, he is not a child -- only like a child. The difference is there and the similarity is there. The similarity is the innocence regained. Again someone is like a child. A child is standing naked -- no one feels the nakedness because a child is still unaware of the body. His nakedness has a quality different from your nakedness. You are aware of the body.

The sage must regain this innocence. Mahavir stands again naked. That nakedness again has the same quality of innocence. He has forgotten his body; he is no longer the body. But one difference is also there, and the difference is great: the child is simply ignorant, hence the innocence. But the sage is wise, that is the reason for his innocence.

The child will one day become aware of his body and will feel the nakedness. He will try to hide, he will become guilty, and he will feel shame. He will come to be aware. So his innocence is an innocence of ignorance. Knowledge will destroy it.
That is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden of Eden. They were naked like children. They were not aware of the body; they were not aware of anger, greed, lust, sex or anything. They were unaware. They were like children, innocent.

But God had forbidden them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The tree of knowledge was forbidden but they ate, because anything forbidden becomes inviting. Anything forbidden becomes attractive! They were living in a big garden with an infinite number of trees, but the tree of knowledge became the most important and significant because it was forbidden. Really, this forbidden-ness became the attraction, the invitation. They were as if magnetized, hypnotized by the tree. They couldn't escape it, they had to eat.

But this story is beautiful because the tree is named the tree of knowledge. The moment they ate the fruit of knowledge they became non-innocent. They became aware; they came to realize that they were naked. Immediately, Eve tried to hide her body. With awareness of the body they became aware of everything -- anger, lust, greed, everything. They became adult, so they were expelled from the garden.

So in the Bible knowledge is sin. They were thrown out of the garden, they were punished, because of knowledge. Unless they become again like children -- innocent, not-knowing -- they cannot enter the garden. They can enter the kingdom of God again only if they fulfill this condition of becoming innocent again.

The whole thing is just the story of humanity. Every child is expelled from the garden, not only Adam and Eve. Every child lives his childhood in innocence without knowing anything. He is pure, but the purity is of ignorance. It cannot continue. Unless it becomes a purity of wisdom, you cannot rely on it. It will have to go, sooner or later you will have to eat the fruit of knowledge.

Each child will have to eat the fruit of knowledge. It was easy in the garden of Eden -- just the tree was there. As a substitute for the tree we have schools, colleges and universities. Each child will have to pass, will have to become non-innocent, will have to lose his innocence. The very world needs knowledge, the very existence needs knowledge. You cannot exist in it without knowledge. And the moment knowledge comes, division enters. You begin to divide between what is good and what is bad.

So for tantra the division into good and bad is impurity. Before it you are pure, after it you are pure; in it you are impure. But knowledge is a necessary evil, you cannot escape it. One has to go through it; that is part of life. But one need not remain in it always, one can transcend it. Transcendence makes you again pure and innocent. If divisions lost their meaning, if the knowledge which differentiates between good and evil were no more, you would again look at the world from an innocent attitude.
Jesus says, "Unless you become like children, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God." Unless you become like children... this is the purity of tantra.

Lao Tsu says, "One inch of division, and heaven and hell are set apart." No-division is the mind of the sage -- no division at all! A sage doesn't know what is good or what is bad. He is like children but unlike them also, because he has known this division. He has passed through this division and transcended it; he has gone beyond it. He has known darkness and light, but now he has gone beyond it. Now he sees darkness as part of light and light as part of darkness, now there is no division. Light and darkness have both become one -- degrees of one phenomenon. Now he sees everything as degrees of one; howsoever polar opposite they are, they are not two. Life and death, love and hate, good and bad, everything is part of one phenomenon, one energy. The difference is only of degrees, and they can never be divided. It cannot be demarked, that "From this point there is division." There is no division.

What is good? What is bad? From where can you define them and demark them as separate? They are always one. They are only different degrees of the same thing. Once this is known and felt, your mind becomes again pure. This is the purity meant by tantra. So I will define tantric purity as innocence, not as goodness.

But innocence can be ignorant -- then it is of no use. It has to be lost, you have to be thrown out of it; otherwise you cannot mature. Giving up knowledge and transcendence of knowledge are both part of maturing, part of being really adult. So go through it, but do not remain there. Move! Go on moving! A day comes when you are beyond it.

That is why tantric purity is difficult to understand and can be misunderstood. It is delicate! So to recognize a tantric sage is virtually impossible. Ordinary saints and sages can be recognized because they follow you -- your standards, your definitions, your morality. A tantric sage is even difficult to recognize because he transcends all divisions. So really, in the whole history of human growth we know nothing about tantric sages. Nothing is mentioned or recorded about them because it is so difficult to recognize them.

Confucius went to Lao Tsu. Lao Tsu's mind is that of a tantrically awakened sage. He never knew about the word `tantra'; the word is meaningless for him. He never knew anything about tantra, but whatsoever he has said IS tantra. Confucius is representative of our mind, he is the arch-representative. He continually thinks in terms of good and bad, of what should be done and what should not be done. He is a legalist -- the greatest legalist ever born. He went to see Lao Tsu, and he asked Lao Tsu, "What is good? What ought one to do? What is bad? Define it clearly."

Lao Tsu said, "Definitions create a mess, because defining means dividing: this is this, and that is that." You divide and say A is A and B is B... you have divided. You say A cannot be B; then you have created a division, a dichotomy, and the existence is one. A is always becoming B, A is always moving into B. Life is always becoming death, life is always moving into death, so how can you define? Childhood is moving into youth and youth is moving into old age; health is moving into disease and disease is moving into health. So where can you demark them as separate?

Life is one movement, and the moment you define you create a mess, because definitions will be dead and life is an alive movement. So definitions are always false. Lao Tsu said, "Defining creates non-truth, so do not define. Do not say what is good and what is bad."

So Confucius said, "What are you saying? Then how can people be led and guided? Then how can they be taught? How can they be made moral and good?"

Lao Tsu said, "When someone tries to make someone else good, that is a sin in my eyes. Who are you to lead? Who are you to guide? And the more guides there are, the more confusion. Leave everyone to himself. Who are you?"

This type of attitude seems dangerous. It is! Society cannot be founded on such attitudes. Confucius goes on asking, and the whole point is that Lao Tsu says, "Nature is enough, no morality is needed. Nature is spontaneous. Nature is enough, no imposed laws and disciplines are needed. Innocence is enough; no morality is needed. Nature is spontaneous, nature is enough. No imposed laws and disciplines are needed. Innocence is enough. Knowledge is not needed."

Confucius came back very much disturbed. He could not sleep for nights. And his disciples asked, "Tell us something about the meeting. What happened?" Confucius answered, "He is not a man, he is a danger, a dragon. He is not a man. Never go to that place where he is. Whenever you hear about Lao Tsu, just escape from that place. He will disturb your mind completely."

And that is right, because the whole of tantra is concerned with how to transcend the mind. It is bound to destroy the mind. Mind lives with definitions, laws and disciplines; mind is an order. But remember, tantra is not disorder, and that is a very subtle point to be understood.

Confucius could not understand Lao Tsu. When Confucius left, Lao Tsu was laughing and laughing and so his disciples asked, "Why are you laughing so much? What has happened?"

Lao Tsu is reported to have said, "The mind is such a barrier to understanding. Even the mind of a Confucius is a barrier. He could not understand me at all, and whatsoever he will say about me will be a misunderstanding. He thinks he is going to create order in the world. You CANNOT create order in the world. Order is inherent in it; it is always there. When you try to create order you create disorder." Lao Tsu said, "He will think that I am creating disorder, and really, he is the one who is creating disorder. I am against all imposed orders because I believe in a spontaneous discipline which comes and grows automatically. You need not impose it."

Tantra looks at things in this way. For tantra, innocence is spontaneity, SAHAJATA -- to be oneself without any imposition, to be simply oneself, growing like a tree. Not the tree of your garden, but the tree of your forest, growing spontaneously; not guided, because every guidance is a misguidance. For tantra, every guidance is a misguidance. Not guided, not guarded, not directed, not motivated, but simply growing.

The inner law is enough; no other law is needed. And if you need some other law, it only shows that you do not know the inner law, you have lost contact with it. So the real thing is not something imposed. The real thing is again regaining the balance, again moving to the center, again returning to the home so that you gain the real inner law.

But for morality, for religions -- so-called religions -- order is to be imposed, goodness is to be imposed from above, from without. Religions, moral teachings, priests, popes, they all take you as inherently bad -- remember this. They do not believe in the goodness of man; they do not believe in any inner goodness. They believe that you are evil, that unless you are taught to be good you cannot be good; unless goodness is forced from without, there is no possibility of it coming from within.

So for priests, for religious people, for moralists, you are naturally bad. Goodness is going to be a discipline imposed from without. You are a chaos and order has to be brought in by them; they will bring the order. And they have made the whole world a mess, a confusion, a madhouse, because they have been ordering for centuries and centuries, disciplining for centuries and centuries. They have taught so much that the taught ones have gone mad.

Tantra believes in your inner goodness: remember this difference. Tantra says that everyone is born good, that goodness is your nature. It is the case! You are already good! You need a natural growth, you do not need any imposition; that is why nothing is taken as bad. If anger is there, if sex is there, if greed is there, tantra says they are also good. The only thing lacking is that you are not centered in yourself; that is why you cannot use them.

Anger is not bad. Really, the problem is that you are not inside, that is why anger creates havoc. If you are present there inside, anger becomes a healthy energy, anger becomes health. Anger is transformed into energy, it becomes good. Whatsoever is there is good. Tantra believes in the inherent goodness of everything. Everything is holy, nothing is unholy and nothing is evil. For tantra there is no devil, only divine existence.

Religions cannot exist without the devil. They need a God and they need a devil also. So do not be misguided if you see only a God in their temples. Just behind that God, the devil is hiding, because no religion can exist without the devil.

Something has to be condemned, something has to be fought, something has to be destroyed. The total is not accepted, only part. This is very basic. You are not accepted totally by any religion, only partially. They say, "We accept your love, but not your hate. Destroy hate." And this is a very deep problem, because when you destroy hate completely love is also destroyed -- because they are not two. They say, "We accept your silence, but we do not accept your anger." Destroy anger and your aliveness is destroyed. Then you will be silent, but not an alive man -- only a dead one. That silence is not life, it is just death.

Religions always divide you into two: the evil and the divine. They accept the divine and are against the evil -- the evil has to be destroyed. So if someone really follows them, he will come to conclude that the moment you destroy the devil, God is destroyed. But no one really follows them -- no one can follow them because the very teaching is absurd. So what is everyone doing? Everyone is just deceiving. That is why there is so much hypocrisy. That hypocrisy has been created by religion. You cannot do whatsoever they are teaching you to do, so you become a hypocrite. If you follow them you will die; if you do not follow them you feel guilty that you are irreligious. So what to do?

The cunning mind makes a compromise. It goes on paying lip service to them, saying, "I am following you," but it goes on doing whatsoever it wants to do. You continue your anger, you continue your sex, you continue your greed, but you go on saying that greed is bad, anger is bad, sex is bad -- that it is a sin. This is hypocrisy. The whole world has become hypocritical, no man is honest. Unless these dividing religions disappear, no man can be honest. This will look contradictory because all the religions are teaching to be honest, but they are the foundation stones of all dishonesty. They make you dishonest; because they
teach you to do impossible things, which you cannot do, you become hypocrites.

Tantra accepts you in your totality, in your wholeness, because tantra says, either accept wholly or reject wholly; there is no in between. A man is a whole, an organic whole. You cannot divide it. You cannot say, "We will not accept this," because that which you reject is organically joined to that which you accept.

It is like this.... My body is there. Someone comes and says, "We accept your blood circulation, but we do not accept the noise of your heart. This continuous beating of your heart we do not accept. We accept your blood circulation. It is okay, it is silent." But my blood circulation is through my heart, and the beating is basically related with blood circulation; it happens because of it. So what am I to do? My heart and my blood circulation are an organic unity. They are not two things, they are one.

So either accept me totally or reject me totally, but do not try to divide me because then you will create a dishonesty, a deep dishonesty. If you go on condemning my heartbeat, then I will also start condemning my heartbeat. But the blood won't be able to circulate and I cannot be alive without it. So what to do? Go on as you are, and go on all the time saying something else which you are not, which you cannot be.

It is not difficult to see how heart and blood circulation are related, but it is difficult to see how love and hate are related. They are one. When you love someone, what are you doing? It is one movement, like breath going out. When you love someone, what are you doing? You are going out to meet him, it is a breath going out. When you hate someone, it is a breath coming back in.

When you love, you are attracted to someone. When you hate, you are repelled. Attraction and repulsion are two waves of one movement. Attraction and repulsion are not two things; you cannot divide them. You cannot say, "You can breathe in but you cannot breathe out, or you can breathe out but you cannot breathe in. You are allowed only one thing. Either go on breathing out or go on breathing in, do not do both." How can you breathe in if you are not allowed to breathe out? And if you are not allowed to hate, you cannot love.

Tantra says, "We accept the whole man because man is an organic unity." Man is a deep unity; you cannot discard anything. And this is as it should be -- because if man is not an organic unity, then in this universe nothing can be an organic unity. Man is the peak of organic wholeness. The stone lying on the street is a unity. The tree is a unity. The flower and the bird are unities. Everything is a unity, so why not man? And man is the peak -- a great unity, a very complex organic whole. Really, you cannot deny anything.

Tantra says, "We accept you as you are. That does not mean there is no need to change; that does not mean that now you have to stop growing. Rather, on the contrary, it means that we accept the basis of growth." Now you can grow, but this growth is not going to be a choice. This growth is going to be a choiceless growth.

Look! For example, when a buddha becomes enlightened we can ask, "Where has his anger gone -- where?" He had anger, he had sex, so where has his sex gone? Where is it that his anger has gone? Where is his greed?" We cannot recognize any anger in him now. When he is enlightened we cannot recognize any anger in him.

Can you recognize the mud in the lotus? The lotus comes from the mud. If you have never seen a lotus growing from the mud and a lotus flower is brought to you, can you conceive that this beautiful lotus flower has come up from the ordinary mud of a pond? This beautiful lotus coming from ugly mud! Can you recognize the mud anywhere in it? It is there, but transformed. Its fragrance is coming from that same ugly mud. The rosiness of the petals is coming from the same ugly mud. If you hide this lotus flower in mud, within days it will disappear again into its mother. Then again you won't be able to recognize where that lotus has gone. Where? Where is the fragrance? Where are those beautiful petals?

You cannot recognize yourself in Buddha, but you are there -- of course, on a greater and higher plane, transformed. The sex is there, the anger is there, the hate is there. Everything which belongs to man is there. Buddha is a man, but he has come to his ultimate growth. He has become a lotus flower; you cannot recognize the mud, but that doesn't mean that the mud is not there. It is there, but not as mud. It is a higher unity. That is why in Buddha you can feel neither hate nor love. That is still more difficult to understand because Buddha appears totally loving -- never hating, always silent -- never angry. But his silence is different from your silence. It cannot be the same.

What is your silence? Somewhere Einstein has said that our peace is nothing but a preparation for war. Between two wars we have a gap of peace, but that peace is not really peace. It is only the gap between two wars, so it becomes a cold war. Thus, we have two types of war -- hot and cold.

After the second world war, Russia and America began a cold war. They are not at peace -- just in preparation for another war. They are getting ready. Each war disturbs, destroys. You have to get ready again, so you need a gap, an interval. But if wars really disappear from the world completely, then this type of peace which means cold war will also disappear, because it always happens between two wars. If war disappears completely, this cold war which we call peace cannot continue.

What is your silence? Just a preparation between two angers. When you seem at ease what is it? Are you really relaxed, really at ease, or are you just preparing for another outburst, for another explosion? Anger is a wastage of energy, so you also need time. When you get angry you cannot get angry again immediately. When you move into the sex act, you cannot move again immediately. You will need time, so you will need a period of BRAHMACHARYA -- celibacy -- for at least two or three days. It will depend on your age. This celibacy is not really celibacy, you are only preparing again.

Between two sex acts there can be no brahmacharya. You go on calling the period between two meals a fast. That is why in the morning you have `breakfast', but where is the fast? You were just preparing. You cannot go on thrusting food into yourself continuously, you have to have a gap, but that gap is not a fast. Really, it is only a preparation for another meal, not a fast.
So when we are silent, it is always between two angers. When we are at ease, it is always between two peaks of tension. When we are celibate, it is only between two sex acts. When we are loving, it is always between two hatreds -- remember this.

So when Buddha is silent, do not think this is your silence. When your anger has disappeared, your silence has disappeared also. They both exist together; they cannot be separated. So when Buddha is a brahmachari -- a celibate -- do not think this is your celibacy. When sex has disappeared, brahmacharya has also disappeared. They both were part of one thing, so they both have disappeared. With a Buddha a very different being is there such as you cannot conceive. You can only conceive of the dichotomy you know. You cannot conceive of what type of man this is, of what has happened to him.

The whole energy has come to a different level, a different plane of existence. The mud has become a lotus, but it is still there. The mud has not been discarded from the lotus; it has been transformed.

So all of the energies within you are accepted by tantra. Tantra is not for discarding anything whatsoever, but for transformation. And tantra says that the first step is to accept. The first step is very difficult -- to accept. You may be getting angry many times every day, but to accept your anger is very difficult. To be angry is very easy; to accept your anger is very difficult. Why? You do not feel so much difficulty in being angry, so why do you feel so much difficulty in accepting it? Getting angry seems not so bad as accepting it. Everyone thinks he is a good man and anger is just momentary, it comes and goes. It doesn't destroy your self-image. You go on remaining good. You say that "It just happened." It is not destructive to your ego.

So those who are cunning will repent immediately. They will get angry and they will repent, they will ask for forgiveness. These are the cunning ones. Why do I call them cunning? Because their anger gives a trembling to their self-image. They begin to feel uneasy. They begin to feel, "I get angry? I am so bad that I get angry?" So the image of a good man trembles. He has to try and make it established again. Immediately he says, "This was bad. I will never do it again. Forgive me." By asking for forgiveness his self-image is established again. He is okay -- back to his previous state when there was no anger. He has canceled his anger by asking for forgiveness. He has called himself bad just to remain good.

That is why you can go on for lives together being angry, being sexual, being possessive, being this and that, but never accepting. This is a trick of the mind. Whatsoever you do is just on the periphery. In the center, you remain good. If you accept that "I have anger," in the center you become bad. Then it is not just a question of getting angry, then it is not momentary. Rather, then anger is part of your constitution. Then it is not that someone irritates you into anger. Even if you are alone, the anger is there. When you are not getting angry the anger is still there, because anger is your energy, part of you.

It is not that sometimes it flares up and then goes off -- no! It cannot flare up if it is not always present. You can turn off this light, you can turn on this light; but the current must remain continuously there. If the current is not there, you cannot turn it on and off. The current, the anger current, is always there; the sex current is always there, the greed current is always there. You can turn it on, you can turn it off. In situations you change, but inwardly you remain the same.

Accepting means anger is not an act. Rather, YOU are anger. Sex is not just an act; YOU are sex. Greed is not just an act; YOU are greed. Accepting this means throwing away the self-image. And we all have built beautiful self-images. Everyone has built a beautiful self-image -- absolutely beautiful. And whatsoever you are doing never touches it, you go on protecting it. The image is protected, so you feel good. That is why you can become angry, you can become sexual, and you are not disturbed. But if you accept and say, "I am sex, I am anger, I am greed," then your self-image falls down immediately.

Tantra says this is the first step, and the most difficult: to accept whatsoever you are. Sometimes we try to accept, but whenever we accept we again do so in a very calculated way. Our cunningness is deep and subtle, and mind has very subtle ways to deceive. Sometimes you accept and say, "Yes, I am angry." But if you accept this, you accept only when you think of how to transcend anger. Then you accept and say, "Okay, I am angry. Now tell me how to go beyond it." You accept sex only to be non-sexual. Whenever you are trying to be something else you are able to accept, because your self-image is again maintained by the future.

You are violent and you are striving to be nonviolent, so you accept and say, "Okay, I am violent. Today I am violent, but tomorrow I will be nonviolent, however." How will you become nonviolent? You postpone this self-image into the future. You do not think of yourself in the present. You always think in terms of the ideal -- of nonviolence, love and compassion. Then you are in the future. This present is just to become a past, your real self is in the future, so you go on identifying yourself with ideals. Those ideals are also ways of not accepting the reality. You are violent -- that is the case. And the present is the only thing that is existential; the future is not. Your ideals are just dreams. They are tricks to postpone the mind, to focus the mind somewhere else.

You are violent: this is the case, so accept it. And do not try to be nonviolent. A violent mind CANNOT become nonviolent. How is this possible? Look deep into it. You are violent, so how can you be nonviolent? Whatsoever you do will be done by the violent mind -- whatsoever! Even while striving to be nonviolent, the effort will be done by the violent mind. You are violent, so by trying to be nonviolent you will be violent. In the very effort to be nonviolent, you will try every type of violence.

That is why you go to these strivers for nonviolence. They may not be violent with others, but they are with themselves. They are very violent with themselves -- murdering themselves. And the more they get mad against themselves, the more they are celebrated. When they become completely mad, suicidal, then the society says, "These are the sages." But they have only transformed the object of violence, nothing else. They were violent with someone else, now they are violent with themselves -- but the violence is there. And when you are violent with someone else the law can protect, the court can help, the society will condemn you. But when you are violent against yourself there is no law. No law can protect you against yourself.

When man is against himself there is no protection, nothing can be done. And no one cares because it is your business. No one else is involved in it: it is your business. So-called monks, so-called saints, they are violent against themselves. No one is interested. They say, "Okay! Go on doing it. It is your business."

If your mind is one of greed, how can you be non-greedy? The greedy mind will remain greedy. Whatsoever is done by it to go beyond greed is not going to help. Of course, we can create new greeds. Ask a greedy mind, "What are you doing just accumulating wealth? You will die and you cannot take your wealth with you." This is the logic of the so-called religious preachers -- that you cannot take your wealth with you. But if someone could take it, then the whole logic would fail.

The greedy man feels the logic, of course. He asks, "How can I take wealth with me?" But he really wants to take it. That is why the priest becomes influential. He shows him that it is nonsense to accumulate things which cannot be taken beyond death. He says, "I will teach you how to accumulate things which can be taken. Virtue can be taken, PUNYA -- good deeds -- can be taken, goodness can be taken, but not wealth. So donate the wealth."

But this is an appeal to his greed. This is telling him, "Now we will give you better things which can be carried beyond death." The appeal obtains results. The greedy man feels, "You are right. Death is there and nothing can be done about it, so I must do something which can be carried beyond. I must create some kind of bank balance in the other world also. The world, this bank balance, cannot be with me forever." He goes on talking in these terms.

Go through the scriptures... they appeal to your greed. They say, "What are you doing wasting your time in momentary pleasures?" The emphasis is on `momentary'. So find some eternal pleasures; then it is okay. They are not against pleasures, they are just against their being momentary. Look at the greed!

Sometimes it happens that you may find a non-greedy man who is enjoying momentary pleasures, but you cannot find among your saints a man who is not asking, demanding for eternal pleasures. The greed in them is even more. You can find a non-greedy man among ordinary men, but you cannot find a non-greedy man among your so-called saints. They also want pleasures, but they are more greedy than you. You are satisfied with momentary pleasures and they are not. Their greed is bigger. Their greed can only be satisfied with eternal pleasures.

Infinite greed asks for infinite pleasures -- remember this. A finite greed is satisfied with finite pleasure. They will ask you, "What are you doing loving a woman? She is nothing but bones and blood. Look deep into the woman you love. What is she?" They are not against the woman, they are against the bones, against the blood, against the body. But if a woman is of gold, then it is okay. They are asking for women of gold.

They are not in this world, so they create another world. They say, "In heaven there are golden damsels -- APSARAS -- who are beautiful and who never age." In the Hindu heaven apsaras, the heavenly girls, remain always at sixteen. They never grow older, they are always sixteen -- never less, never more. So what are you doing wasting your time on these ordinary women? Think of heaven. They are not against pleasure. Really, they are against momentary pleasure.

If, through some whim, God gives this world eternal pleasure, your whole edifice of religion will fall down immediately; the whole appeal will be lost. If somehow bank balances can be carried beyond death, no one will be interested in creating bank balances in the other world. So death is a great help to the priests.

A greedy man is always attracted by another greed. If you tell him and convince him that his greed is the cause of his misery, and that if he leaves greed he will attain a blissful state, he may try -- because now you are not really against his greed. You are giving his greed new pastures. He can move into new dimensions of greed.

So tantra says that a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, a violent mind cannot become nonviolent. But this seems very hopeless. If this is the case, then nothing can be done. Then what does tantra stand for? If a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, and a violent mind nonviolent, and a sex-obsessed mind transformed beyond sex, if nothing can be done then what does tantra stand for? Tantra is not saying that nothing can be done. Something can be done, but the dimension is completely different.

A greedy mind has to understand that it is greedy and accept it -- not try to be non-greedy. The greedy mind has to go deep within itself to realize the depth of its greed. Not moving away from it, but remaining with it; not moving in ideals -- in contradictory ideals, in opposite ideals -- but remaining in the present, moving into the greed, knowing the greed, understanding the greed, and not trying to escape from it in any way. If you can remain with your greed, many things will happen. If you can remain with your greed, with your sex, with your anger, your ego will dissolve. This will be the first thing -- and what a great miracle it is!

Many people come to me and they go on asking how to be egoless. You cannot be egoless unless you look at the foundations of your ego to find it. You are greedy and you think you are non-greedy -- this is the ego. If you are greedy and you know and accept totally that you are greedy, then where can you allow your ego to stand? If you are angry and you say that you are angry -- you do not say it to others, but you feel it deep down, you feel the helplessness -- then where can your anger stand? If you are sexual, accept it. Whatsoever is there, accept it.

The non-acceptance of nature creates the ego, the non-acceptance of your suchness -- your TATHATA, that which you are. If you accept it, the ego will not be there. If you do not accept it, if you reject it, if you create ideals against it, there will be ego. Ideals are the stuff the ego is made of.

Accept yourself. But then you will look like an animal. You will not look like a man because your concept of man is in your ideals. That is why we go on teaching others not to be like animals, and everyone is an animal. What can you do? You ARE an animal. Accept your animality. And the moment you accept your animality, you have done the first thing to go beyond animals -- because no animal knows that it is an animal, only man can know. That is going beyond. You cannot go beyond by denying.

Accept! When everything is accepted, suddenly you will feel that you have transcended. Who is accepting? Who accepts the whole? That which accepts has gone beyond. If you reject, you remain on the same plane. If you accept, you go beyond. Acceptance is transcendence. And if you accept yourself totally, suddenly you are thrown to your center. Then you cannot move anywhere. You cannot move from your suchness, from your nature, so you are thrown to your center.

All these tantric techniques which we are discussing and trying to understand are different ways of throwing you to your center, of throwing you from the periphery. And you are trying to escape from the center in many ways. Ideals are good escapes. Idealists are the most subtle of egoists.

Many things happen.... You are violent and you create an ideal of nonviolence. Then you need not go into yourself, into your violence; there is no need. Then this is the only need -- to go on thinking about nonviolence, reading about nonviolence, and trying to practice nonviolence. You say to yourself, "Do not touch violence," and you are violent. So you can escape from yourself, you can go to the periphery, but then you will never come to the center. That is one thing.

Secondly, when you create the ideal of nonviolence, you can condemn others. Now it becomes very easy. You have the ideal to judge everyone with, and you can say to anyone, "You are violent." India has created many ideals; that is why India continuously goes on condemning the whole world. The whole mind of India is condemnatory. It goes on condemning the whole world: everyone else is violent, only India is nonviolent. No one seems to be nonviolent here, but the ideal is good for condemning others. It never changes you, but you can condemn others because you have the ideal, the criterion. And whenever you are violent you can rationalize it -- your violence is an altogether different thing.

These past twenty-five years we have been violent many times, but we have never condemned our violence. We have always defended and rationalized it in beautiful terms. If we are violent in Bengal, in Bangladesh, then we say that it is to help the people there to obtain freedom. If we are violent in Kashmir, it is to help Kashmiris. But you know, all those who are warmongering say the same. If America is violent in Vietnam, it is for "those poor people." No one is violent for himself; no one ever has been.

We are always violent to help someone. Even if I kill you it is for your own good, it is to help you. And even if you are killed, even if I kill you, just look at my compassion. Even for your own good I can kill you. So go on condemning the whole world.

When India attacked Goa, when India went to war with China, Bertrand Russell criticized Nehru, saying, "Where is your nonviolence now? You are all Gandhians. Where is your nonviolence now?" Nehru replied by banning Bertrand Russell's book in India. The book Russell wrote was banned. This is our nonviolent mind.

This was a good discussion. The book should have been distributed free, because he argued beautifully. He said, "You are a violent people. Your nonviolence was just political. Your Gandhi was not a sage, he was just a diplomatic mind. And you all talk about nonviolence, but when the moment comes you become violent. When others are fighting, you stand on your high altar and you condemn the whole world as violent."

With individuals, with societies, with cultures, with nations, this happens. If you have ideals, you need not transform
yourself. You can always hope to be transformed in the future by the ideals themselves, and you can condemn others very easily.
Tantra says to remain with yourself. Whatsoever you are, accept it. Do not condemn yourself, do not condemn others. Condemnation is futile, energies are not changed by it.

The first step is to accept. Remain with the fact -- this is very scientific -- remain with the fact of anger, greed and sex. And know the fact in its total facticity. Do not just touch it from above, from the surface. Know the fact in its totality, in its total facticity. Move into it to the roots. And remember, whenever you can move to the roots of anything you transcend it. If you can know your sex to the very roots, you become the master of it. If you can know your anger to the very roots, you become the master of it. Then anger becomes just instrumental -- you can use it.

I remember many things about Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff taught his disciples to be rightly angry. We have heard about Buddha's words: right meditation, right thinking and right contemplation. We have heard about Mahavir's teaching of right vision and right knowledge. Gurdjieff taught right anger and right greed, and the teaching was influenced by the old tantra tradition. Gurdjieff was condemned very much in the West, because in the West he was a living symbol of tantra.

He would teach right anger; he would teach you how to be angry totally. If you were angry he would tell you, "Go on. Do not suppress it, let it come out in its totality. Move into it. Become anger. Do not withhold, do not stand aside. Take a deep jump into it. Let your whole body become a flare, a fire."

You have never moved this deeply and you have never seen anyone do so, because everyone is more or less cultured. No one is original; everyone is more or less imitating. No one is original! If you can move into anger totally, you will become just a fire, a burning. The fire will be so deep, the flames will be so deep, that the past and future both will cease immediately. You will become just a present flame. And when your every cell is burning, when every part of the body has become fiery and you have become just anger -- not angry -- then Gurdjieff will say, "Now be aware. Do not suppress. Now be aware. Now suddenly be aware of what you have become, of what anger is."

In this moment of total present-ness one can become suddenly aware, and you can start laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, at the foolishness, at the stupidity of the whole thing. But this is not suppression; this is laughter. You can laugh at yourself because you have transcended yourself. Never again will anger be capable of mastering you.

You have known anger in its totality, and still you could laugh and still you could go beyond it. You could see from beyond your anger. Once you have seen its totality, you know what anger is. And now you also know that even if the whole energy transforms into anger, still you can be an observer, a witness. So there is no fear. Remember this: that which is not known always creates fear. That which is dark always creates fear. You are afraid of your own anger.

So people go on saying that we suppress anger because it is not good to be angry, it may hurt others. But that is not the real cause. The real cause is that they are afraid of their anger. If they really get angry, they do not know what may happen. They are afraid of themselves. They have never known anger. It is a very fearful thing, hidden inside, so they are afraid of it. That is why they fall in line with the society, with the culture, with the education, and they say, "We must not be angry. Anger is bad. It hurts others."

You are afraid of your anger, you are afraid of your sex. You have never been in sex totally. You have never been in sex so totally that you could have forgotten yourself. You were always there; your mind was always there. And if the mind is there in the sex act, then the act is just pseudo, bogus. The mind must dissolve; you must become just body. There must not be any thinking. If thinking is there, you are divided. Then the sex act is nothing but releasing overflowing energy. It is a release, nothing else. But you are afraid to be totally in sex. That is why you fall in line, why you toe the line with the society and say that sex is bad. You are afraid!

Why are you afraid? Because if you move into sex totally, you do not know what you can do, you do not know what can happen, you do not know what animal force may come up, you do not know what your unconscious may throw you into. You do not know! Then you will not be the master; you will not be in control. Your self-image may be destroyed. Thus you control the sex act. And the way to control it is to remain in the mind. Let the sex act be there, but local.

Try to understand this `local' and `general'. Tantra says a sex act is local when only your sex center is involved. It is local; it is a local release. The sex center keeps on accumulating energy. When it is overflowing you have to release it; otherwise it will create tensions, it will create heaviness. You release it, but it is a local release. Your whole body, your whole self is not involved. Non-local, total involvement means that every fiber of the body, every cell of the body, whatsoever you are, is in it. Your whole being has become sexual. Not only your sex center, your whole being has become sexual.

But then you are afraid because then anything is possible. And you do not know what can happen because you have never known the totality. You may do certain things of which you cannot conceive.

Your unconscious will explode. You will become not one animal, but many animals, because you have passed through many lives, through many animal bodies. You may start howling, you may start screaming, you may start roaring like a lion. You do not know.
Anything is possible -- that creates fear. You need to be in control so that you never lose yourself in anything. That is why you never know anything. And unless you know, you cannot transcend.

Accept, move deep, go to the very roots. This is tantra. Tantra stands for deep experiences. Anything experienced can be transcended; anything suppressed can never be transcended.

This much for today.

10Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #9 周五 2月 03, 2012 10:27 am

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Techniques for centering
12 November 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7211125
ShortTitle: VBT109
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 105 mins

13. OR, IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLES OF THE PEACOCK TAIL TO BE YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. NOW LET THEIR BEAUTY MELT WITHIN. SIMILARLY, AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL -- UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES. THEN YOUR WISH FOR ANOTHER COMES TRUE.
14. PLACE YOUR WHOLE ATTENTION IN THE NERVE, DELICATE AS THE LOTUS THREAD, IN THE CENTER OF YOUR SPINAL COLUMN. IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED.


Man is born with a center, but he remains completely oblivious of it. Man can live without knowing his center, but man cannot be without a center. The center is the link between man and existence; it is the root. You may not know it, knowledge is not essential for the center to be, but if you do not know it you will lead a life that is rootless -- as if rootless. You will not feel any ground, you will not feel yourself based; you will not feel at home in the universe. You will be homeless.

Of course, the center is there, but by not knowing it your life will be just a drifting -- meaningless, empty, reaching nowhere. You will feel as if you are living without life, drifting, just waiting for death. You can go on postponing from one moment to another, but you know very well that that postponing will lead you nowhere. You are just passing time, and that feeling of deep frustration will follow you like a shadow. Man is born with a center, but not with the knowledge of the center. The knowledge has to be gained.

You have the center. The center is there; you cannot be without it. How can you exist without a center? How can you exist without a bridge between you and existence?... or if you like, the word 'God'. You cannot exist without a deep link. You have roots in the divine. Every moment you live through those roots, but those roots are underground. Just as with any tree, the roots are underground; the tree is unaware of its own roots. You also have roots. That rootedness is your center. When I say man is born with it, I mean it is a possibility that you can become aware of your rootedness. If you become aware, your life becomes actual; otherwise your life will be just like a deep sleep, a dream.

What Abraham Maslow has called "self-actualization" is really nothing but becoming aware of your inner center from where you are linked with the total universe, becoming aware of your roots: you are not alone, you are not atomic, you are part of this cosmic whole. This universe is not an alien world. You are not a stranger, this universe is your home. But unless you find your roots, your center, this universe remains something alien, something foreign.

Sartre says that man lives as if he has been thrown into the world. Of course, if you do not know your center you will feel a thrownness, as if you have been thrown into the world. You are an outsider; you do not belong to this world and this world doesn't belong to you. Then fear, then anxiety, then anguish are bound to result. A man as an outsider in the universe is bound to feel deep anxiety, dread, fear, anguish. His whole life will be just a fight, a struggle, and a struggle which is destined to be a failure. Man cannot succeed because a part can never succeed against the whole.

You cannot succeed against existence. You can succeed with it, but never against it. And that is the difference between a religious man and a non-religious man. A non-religious man is against the universe; a religious man is with the universe. A religious man feels at home. He doesn't feel he has been thrown into the world, he feels he has grown in the world. Remember the difference between being thrown and being grown.

When Sartre says man is thrown into the world, the very word, the very formulation shows that you do not belong. And the word, the choice of the word 'thrown' means that you have been forced without your consent. So this world appears inimical. Then anguish will be the result.

It can be otherwise only if you are not thrown into the world, but you have grown as a part, as an organic part. Really, it would be better to say that you are the universe grown into a particular dimension which we call "human." The universe grows in multi-dimensions -- in trees, in hills, in stars, in planets... in multi-dimensions. Man is also a dimension of growth. The universe is realizing itself through many, many dimensions. Man is also a dimension along with the height and the peak. No tree can become aware of its roots; no animal can become aware of its roots. That is why there is no anxiety for them.
If you are not aware of your roots, of your center, you can never be aware of your death. Death is only for man. It exists only for man because only man can become aware of his roots, aware of his center, aware of his totality and his rootedness in the universe.

If you live without a center, if you feel you are an outsider, then anguish will result. However, if you feel that you are at home, that you are a growth, a realization of the potentiality of the existence itself -- as if existence itself has become aware in you, as if it has gained awareness in you -- if you feel that way, if you really realize that way, the result will be bliss.

Bliss is the result of an organic unity with the universe, and anguish the result of an enmity. But unless you know the center you are bound to feel a thrownness, as if life has been forced upon you. This center which is there, although man is not aware of it, is the concern of these sutras which we will discuss. Before we enter into VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA and its techniques concerning the center, two or three things more.

One: when man is born he is rooted in a particular spot, in a particular CHAKRA -- center -- and that is the navel. The Japanese call it HARA; hence the term HARA-KIRI. Hara-kiri means suicide. Literally, the term means killing the hara -- the spine, the center. Hara is the center; destroying the center is the meaning of hara-kiri. But in a way, we have all committed hara-kiri. We have not killed the center, but we have forgotten it, or we have never remembered it. It is there waiting, and we have been drifting away and away from it.

When a child is born he is rooted in the navel, in the hara; he lives through the hara. Look at a child breathing -- his navel goes up and down. He breathes with the belly, he lives with the belly -- not with the head, not with the heart. But by and by he will have to drift away.

First he will develop another center -- that is the heart, the center of emotion. He will learn love, he will be loved, and another center will develop. This center is not the real center; this center is a by-product. That is why psychologists say that if a child is not loved, he will never be able to love.

If a child is brought up in a non-loving situation -- a situation which is cold, with no one to love and give warmth -- he himself will never be able in his life to love anyone because the very center will not develop. Mother's love, father's love, family, society -- they help to develop a center. That center is a by-product; you are not born with it. So if it is not being helped to grow, it will not grow. Many, many persons are without the love center. They go on talking about love, and they go on believing that they love, but they lack the center, so how can they love? It is difficult to get a loving mother, and very difficult and rare to get a loving father. Every father, every mother, thinks that he or she loves. It is not so easy. Love is a difficult growth, very difficult. But if love is not there in the beginning for the child, he himself will never be able to love.

That is why the whole humanity lives without love. You go on producing children, but you do not know how to give them a love center. Rather, on the contrary, the more society becomes civilized, the more it forces into being a third center, which is intellect. The navel is the original center. A child is born with it; it is not a by-product. Without it life is impossible, so it is given. The second center is a by-product. If the child gets love, he responds. In this responding, a center grows in him: that is the heart center. The third center is reason, intellect, head. Education, logic and training create a third center; that too is a by-product.

But we live at the third center. The second is almost absent -- or even if it is present, then it is non-functioning; or even if it functions sometimes, it functions irregularly. But the third center, the head, becomes the basic force in life because the whole life depends on this third center. It is utilitarian. You need it for reason, logic, thinking. So everyone becomes, sooner or later, head-oriented; you begin to live in the head.

Head, heart, navel -- these are the three centers. The navel is the given center, the original one. Heart can be developed, and it is good to develop it for many reasons. Reason is necessary to develop also, but reason must not be developed at the cost of the heart -- because if reason is developed at the cost of the heart then you miss the link and you cannot come to the navel again. The development is from reason to existence to being. Let us try to understand it in this way.
The center of the navel is in being; the center of the heart is in feeling; the center of the head is in knowing. Knowing is the farthest from being -- feeling is nearer. If you miss the feeling center, then it is very difficult to create a bridge between reason and being -- really, very difficult. That is why a loving person may realize his at-homeness in the world more easily than a person who lives through intellect.

Western culture has basically emphasized the head center. That is why in the West a deep concern is felt for man. And the deep concern is with his homelessness, his emptiness, his uprootedness. Simone Weil wrote a book, THE NEED FOR ROOTS. Western man feels uprooted, as if with no roots. The reason is because only the head has become the center. The heart has not been trained, it is missing.

The beating of the heart is not your heart, it is just a physiological function. So if you feel the beating, do not misunderstand that you have a heart. Heart is something else. Heart means the capacity to feel; head means the capacity to know. Heart means the capacity to feel, and being means the capacity to be one -- to be one with something... the capacity to be one with something.

Religion is concerned with the being; poetry is concerned with the heart; philosophy and science are concerned with the head. These two centers, heart and head, are peripheral centers, not real centers, just false centers. The real center is the navel, the hara. How to attain it again? Or how to realize it?

Ordinarily it happens only sometimes -- rarely, accidentally it happens -- that you come near the hara. That moment will become a very deep, blissful moment. For example, in sex sometimes you come near the hara, because in sex your mind, your consciousness moves downwards again. You have to leave your head and fall down. In a deep sexual orgasm, sometimes it happens that you are near your hara. That is why there is so much fascination about sex. It is not really sex which gives you the blissful experience, really, it is the hara.

In falling down toward sex you pass through the hara, you touch it. But for modern man even that has become impossible, because for modern man even sex is a cerebral affair, a mental affair. Even sex has gone into the head; he thinks about it. That is why there are so many films, so many novels, so much literature, pornography and the like. Man thinks about sex, but that is absurdity. Sex is an experience; you cannot think about it. And if you start thinking about it, it will be more and more difficult to experience it because it is not a concern of the head at all. Reason is not needed.

And the more modern man feels incapable of going deep in sex, the more he thinks about it. It becomes a vicious circle. And the more he thinks about it, the more it becomes cerebral. Then even sex becomes futile. It has become futile in the West, a repetitive thing, boring. Nothing is gained, you just go on repeating an old habit. And ultimately you feel frustrated -- as if you have been cheated. Why? Because really, the consciousness is not falling back down to the center.

Only when passing through the hara do you feel bliss. So whatsoever may be the cause, whenever you pass through the hara you feel bliss. A warrior on the field fighting sometimes passes through the hara, but not modern warriors because they are not warriors at all. A person throwing a bomb on a city is asleep. He is not a warrior; he is not a fighter; he is not a KSHATRIYA -- not Arjuna fighting.

Sometimes when one is on the verge of death one is thrown back to the hara. For a warrior fighting with his sword, any moment death becomes possible, any moment he may be no more. And when fighting with a sword you cannot think. If you think, you will be no more. You have to act without thinking because thinking needs time; if you are fighting with a sword you cannot think. If you think then the other will win, you will be no more. There is no time to think, and the mind needs time. Because there is no time to think and thinking will mean death, consciousness falls down from the head -- it goes to the hara, and a warrior has a blissful experience. That is why there is so much fascination about war. Sex and war have been two fascinations, and the reason is this: you pass through the hara. You pass through it in any danger.

Nietzsche says, live dangerously. Why? Because in danger you are thrown back to the hara. You cannot think; you cannot work things out with the mind. You have to act immediately.

A snake passes. Suddenly you see the snake and there is a jump. There is no deliberate thinking about it, that "There is a snake." There is no syllogism; you do not argue within your mind, "Now there is a snake and snakes are dangerous, so I must jump." There is no logical reasoning like this. If you reason like this, then you will not be alive at all. You cannot reason. You have to act spontaneously, immediately. The act comes first and then comes thinking. When you have jumped, then you think.

In ordinary life, when there is no danger you think first, then you act. In danger, the whole process is reversed; you act first and then you think. That action coming first without thinking throws you to your original center -- the hara. That is why there is the fascination with danger.

You are driving a car faster and faster and faster, and suddenly a moment comes when every moment is dangerous. Any moment and there will be no life. In that moment of suspense, when death and life are just as near to each other as possible, two points just near and you in between, the mind stops: you are thrown to the hara. That is why there is so much fascination with cars, driving -- fast driving, mad driving. Or you are gambling and you have put everything you have at stake -- the mind stops, there is danger. The next moment you can become a beggar. The mind cannot function; you are thrown to the hara.
Dangers have their appeal because in danger your day-to-day, ordinary consciousness cannot function. Danger goes deep. Your mind is not needed; you become a no-mind. YOU ARE! You are conscious, but there is no thinking. That moment becomes meditative. Really, in gambling, gamblers are seeking a meditative state of mind. In danger -- in a fight, in a duel, in wars -- man has always been seeking meditative states.

A bliss suddenly erupts, explodes in you. It becomes a showering inside. But these are sudden, accidental happenings. One thing is certain: whenever you feel blissful you are nearer the hara. That is certain no matter what the cause; the cause is irrelevant. Whenever you pass near the original center you are filled with bliss.

These sutras are concerned with creating a rootedness in the hara, in the center, scientifically, in a planned way -- not accidentally, not momentarily, but permanently. You can remain continuously in the hara, that can become your rootedness. How to make this so and how to create this are the concerns of these sutras.

Now we will take the first sutra which is another of the ways concerning the point, or center.

First:

OR IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLES OF THE PEACOCK TAIL TO BE YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. NOW, LET THEIR BEAUTY MELT WITHIN. SIMILARLY, AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL -- UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES. THEN YOUR WISH FOR ANOTHER COMES TRUE.

All these sutras are concerned with how to achieve the inner center. The basic mechanism used, the basic technique used is, if you can create a center outside -- anywhere: in the mind, in the heart, or even outside on a wall -- and if you concentrate totally on it and you bracket out the whole world, you forget the whole world and only one point remains in your consciousness, suddenly you will be thrown to your inner center.

How does it work? First understand this... Your mind is just a vagabond, a wandering. It is never at one point. It is always going, moving, reaching, but never at any point. It goes from one thought to another, from A to B. But it is never at the A; it is never at the B. It is always on the move. Remember this: mind is always on the move, hoping to reach somewhere but never reaching. It cannot reach! The very structure of the mind is movement. It can only move; that is the inherent nature of the mind. The very process is movement -- from A to B, from B to C... it goes on and on.

If you stop at A or B or any point, the mind will fight with you. The mind will say, "Move on," because if you stop the mind dies immediately. It can be alive only in movement. The mind means a process. If you stop and do not move, mind suddenly becomes dead, it is no more there; only consciousness remains.

Consciousness is your nature; mind is your activity -- just like walking. It is difficult because we think mind is something substantial. We think mind is a substance -- it is not, mind is just an activity. So it is really better to call it "minding" than mind. It is a process just like walking. Walking is a process, if you stop, there is no walking. You have legs, but no walking. Legs can walk, but if you stop then legs will be there but there will be no walking.

Consciousness is like legs -- your nature. Mind is like walking -- just a process. When consciousness moves from one place to another, this process is mind. When consciousness moves from A to B, from B to C, this movement is mind. If you stop the movement, there is no mind. You are conscious, but there is no mind. You have legs, but no walking. Walking is a function, an activity; mind is also a function, an activity.

If you stop at any point, the mind will struggle. The mind will say, "Go on!" The mind will try in every way to push you forward or backward or anywhere -- but, "Go on!" Anywhere will do, but do not stay at one point.

If you insist and if you do not obey the mind... it is difficult because you have always obeyed. You have never ordered the mind; you have never been masters. You cannot be because, really, you have never disidentified yourself from the mind. You think you are the mind. This fallacy that you are the mind gives the mind total freedom, because then there is no one to master it, to control it. There is no one! Mind itself becomes the master. It may become the master, but that mastery is just seemingly so. Try once and you can break that mastery -- it is false.

Mind is just a slave pretending to be the master, but it has pretended so long, for lives and lives, that even the master believes that the slave is the master. That is just a belief. Try the contrary and you will know that that belief was totally unfounded.

This first sutra says, IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLE OF THE PEACOCK TAIL TO BE YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. NOW LET THEIR BEAUTY MELT WITHIN. Think that your five senses are five colors, and those five colors are filling the whole space. Just imagine your five senses are five colors -- beautiful colors, alive, extended into infinite space. Then move within with those colors. Move within and feel a center where all these five colors are meeting within you. This is just imagination, but it helps. Just imagine these five colors penetrating within you and meeting at a point.

Of course, these five colors will meet at a point: the whole world will dissolve. In your imagination there are only five colors -- just like around the tail of a peacock -- spread all over space, going deep within you, meeting at a point. Any point will do, but the hara is the best. Think that they are meeting at your navel -- that the whole world has become colors, and those colors are meeting at your navel. See that point, concentrate on that point, and concentrate until the point dissolves. If you concentrate on the point it dissolves, because it is just imagination. Remember, whatsoever we have done is imagination. If you concentrate on it, it will dissolve. And when the point dissolves, you are thrown to your center.

The world has dissolved. There is no world for you. In this meditation there is only color. You have forgotten the whole world; you have forgotten all the objects. You have chosen only five colors. Choose any five colors. This is particularly for those who have a very keen eye, a very deep color sensitivity. This meditation will not be helpful to everyone. Unless you have a painter's eye, a color consciousness, unless you can imagine color, it is difficult.

Have you ever observed that your dreams are colorless? Only one person in a hundred is capable of seeing colored dreams. You see just black and white. Why? The whole world is colored and your dreams are colorless. If one of you remembers that his dreams are colored, this meditation is for him. If someone remembers even sometimes that he sees colors in his dreams, then this meditation will be for him.

If you say to a person who is insensitive to color, "Imagine the whole space filled with colors," he will not be able to imagine. Even if he tries to imagine, if he thinks, "Red," he will see the word `red', he will not see the color. He will say, "Green," and the word `green' will be there, but there will be no greenness.

So if you have a color sensitivity, then try this method. There are five colors. The whole world is just colors and those five colors are meeting in you. Deep down somewhere in you, those five colors are meeting. Concentrate on that point, and go on concentrating on it. Do not move from it; remain at it. Do not allow the mind. Do not try to think about green and red and yellow and about colors -- do not think. Just see them meeting in you. Do not think about them! If you think, the mind has moved. Just be filled with colors meeting in you, and then at the meeting point, concentrate. Do not think! Concentration is not thinking; it is not contemplation.

If you are really filled with colors and you have become just a rainbow, a peacock, and the whole space is filled with colors, it will give you a deep feeling of beauty. But do not think about it; do not say it is beautiful. Do not move in thinking. Concentrate on the point where all these colors are meeting and go on concentrating on it. It will disappear, it will dissolve, because it is just imagination. And if you force concentration, imagination cannot remain there, it will dissolve.

The world has dissolved already; there were only colors. Those colors were your imagination. Those imaginative colors were meeting at a point. That point, of course, was imaginary -- and now, with deep concentration, that point will dissolve. Where are you now? Where will you be? You will be thrown to your center.

Objects have dissolved through imagination. Now imagination will dissolve through concentration. You alone are left as a subjectivity. The objective world has dissolved; the mental world has dissolved. You are there only as pure consciousness.
That is why this sutra says: AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL... This will help. If you cannot imagine colors, then any point on the wall will help. Take anything just as an object of concentration. If it is inner it is better, but again, there are two types of personalities. For those who are introvert, it will be easy to conceive of all the colors meeting within. But there are extroverts who cannot conceive of anything within. They can imagine only the outside. Their minds move only on the outside; they cannot move in. For them there is nothing like innerness.

The English philosopher David Hume has said, "Whenever I go in, I never meet any self. All that I meet are only reflections of the outside world -- a thought, some emotion, some feeling. I never meet the innerness, I only meet the outside world reflected in." This is the extrovert mind par excellence, and David Hume is one of the most extrovert minds.
So if you cannot feel anything within, and if the mind asks, "What does this innerness mean? How to go in?" then try any point on the wall instead. There are persons who come to me and ask how to go in. It is a problem, because if you know only outgoing-ness, if you know only outward movements, it is difficult to imagine how to go in.

If you are an extrovert then do not try this point inside, try it outside. The same will be the result. Make a dot on the wall; concentrate on it. Then you will have to concentrate on it with open eyes. If you are creating a center inside, a point within, then you will have to concentrate with closed eyes.

Make a point on a wall and concentrate on it. The real thing happens because of concentration, not because of the point. Whether it is out or in is irrelevant. It depends on you. If you are looking at the outside wall, concentrating on it, then go on concentrating until the point dissolves. That has to be noted: UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES! Do not blink your eyes, because blinking gives a space for the mind to move again. Do not blink, because then the mind starts thinking. It becomes a gap; in the blinking, the concentration is lost. So no blinking.

You might have heard about Bodhidharma, one of the greatest masters of meditation in the whole history of humankind. A very beautiful story is reported about him.

He was concentrating on something -- something outward. His eyes would blink and the concentration would be lost, so he tore off his eyelids. This is a beautiful story: he tore off his eyelids, threw them away, and concentrated. After a few weeks, he saw some plants growing on the spot where he had thrown his eyelids. This anecdote happened on a mountain in China, and the mountain's name is Tah, or Ta. Hence, the name `tea'. Those plants which were growing became tea, and that is why tea helps you to be awake.

When your eyes are blinking and you are falling down into sleep, take a cup of tea. Those are Bodhidharma's eyelids. That is why Zen monks consider tea to be sacred. Tea is not any ordinary thing, it is sacred -- Bodhidharma's eyelids. In Japan they have tea ceremonies, and every house has a tea room, and the tea is served with religious ceremony; it is sacred. Tea has to be taken in a very meditative mood.

Japan has created beautiful ceremonies around tea drinking. They will enter the tea room as if they are entering a temple. Then the tea will be made, and everyone will sit silently listening to the samovar bubbling. There is the steam, the noise, and everyone just listening. It is no ordinary thing... Bodhidharma's eyelids. And because Bodhidharma was trying to be awake with open eyes, tea helps. Because the story happened on the mountain of Tah, it is called tea. Whether true or untrue, this anecdote is beautiful.

If you are concentrating outwardly, then non-blinking eyes will be needed, as if you no longer have eyelids. That is the meaning of throwing away the eyelids. You have only eyes, without eyelids to close them. Concentrating until the point dissolves. If you persist, if you insist and do not allow the mind to move, the point dissolves. And when the point dissolves, if you were concentrated on the point and there was only this point for you in the world, if the whole world had dissolved already, if only this point remained and now the point also dissolves, then the consciousness cannot move anywhere. There is no object to move to -- all the dimensions are closed. The mind is thrown to itself, the consciousness is thrown to itself, and you enter the center.

So whether in or out, within or without, concentrate until the point dissolves. This point will dissolve for two reasons. If it is within, it is imaginary -- it will dissolve. If it is outside, it is not imaginary, it is real. You have made a dot on the wall and have concentrated on it. Then why will this dot dissolve? One can understand it dissolving inside -- it was not there at all; you just imagined it -- but on the wall it is there, so why will it dissolve?

It dissolves for a certain reason. If you concentrate on a point, the point is not really going to dissolve, the mind dissolves. If you are concentrating on an outer point, the mind cannot move. Without movement it cannot live, it dies, it stops. And when the mind stops you cannot be related with anything outward. Suddenly all bridges are broken, because mind is the bridge. When you are concentrating on a point on the wall, constantly your mind is jumping from you to the point, from the point to you, from you to the point. There is a constant jumping; there is a process.

When the mind dissolves you cannot see the point, because really, you never see the point through the eyes: you see the point through the mind AND through the eyes. If the mind is not there, the eyes cannot function. You may go on staring at the wall, but the point will not be seen. The mind is not there; the bridge is broken. The point is real -- it is there. When the mind will come back, you will see it again; it is there. But now you cannot see it. And when you cannot see, you cannot move out. Suddenly, you are at your center.

This centering will make you aware of your existential roots. You will know from where you are joined to the existence. In you, there is a point which is related with the total existence, which is one with it. Once you know this center, you know you are at home. This world is not alien. You are not an outsider. You are an insider, you belong to the world. There is no need of any struggle, there is no fight. There is no inimical relationship between you and the existence. The existence becomes your mother.

It is the existence that has come into you and that has become aware. It is the existence that has flowered in you. This feeling, this realization, this happening... and there can be no anguish again.

Then bliss is not a phenomenon; it is not something that happens and then goes. Then blissfulness is your very nature. When one is rooted in one's center, blissfulness is natural. One happens to be blissful, and by and by one even becomes unaware that one is blissful, because awareness needs contrast. If you are miserable, then you can feel it when you are blissful. When misery is no more, by and by you forget misery completely. And you forget your bliss also. And only when you can forget your bliss also are you really blissful. Then it is natural. As stars are shining, as rivers are flowing, so are you blissful. Your very being is blissful. It is not something that has happened to you: now it IS YOU.

With the second sutra, the mechanism is the same, the scientific basis is the same, the working structure is the same:

PLACE YOUR WHOLE ATTENTION IN THE NERVE, DELICATE AS THE LOTUS THREAD, IN THE CENTER OF YOUR SPINAL COLUMN. IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED.

For this sutra, for this technique of meditation, one has to close his eyes and visualize his spinal column, his backbone. It is good to look up in some physiology book the structure of the body, or to go to some medical college or hospital and look at the structure of the body. Then close your eyes and visualize your backbone. Let the backbone be straight, erect.

Visualize it, see it, and just in the middle of it visualize a nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, running in the center of your spinal column. IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED.

If you can, concentrate on the spinal column, and then on a thread in the middle of it -- on a very delicate nerve like a lotus thread running through it. Concentrate on it, and this very concentration throws you to your center. Why?
The spinal column is the base of your whole body structure. Everything is joined to it. Really, your brain is nothing but one pole of your spinal column. Physiologists say it is nothing but a spinal column growth; your brain is really a growth of your spinal column.

Your spine is connected with your whole body -- everything is connected to it. That is why it is called the spine, the base. In this spine there is really a thread-like thing, but physiology will not say anything about it because it is not material. In this spine, just in the middle, there is a silver cord -- a very delicate nerve. It is not really a nerve in the physiological sense. You cannot operate and find it; it will not be found there.

But in deep meditation it is seen. It is there; it is non-material. It is energy, not matter. And really, that energy cord in your spinal column is your life. Through that you are related to the invisible existence, and through that also you are related to the visible. That is the bridge between the invisible and the visible. Through that thread you are related to the body, and through that thread also you are related to your soul.

First, visualize the spine. At first you will feel very strange, you will be able to visualize it, but as an imagination. And if you go on endeavoring, then it will not be just your imagination. You will become capable of seeing your spinal column.
I was working with a seeker on this technique. I gave him a picture of the body structure to concentrate upon so that he would begin to feel how the spinal column can be visualized inside. Then he started. Within a week he came and said, "This is very strange. I tried to see the picture you gave me, but many times that picture disappeared and I saw a different spine. It is not exactly like the picture you gave to me."

So I told him, "Now you are on the right path. Forget that picture completely, and go on seeing the spine that has become visible to you."

Man can see his own body structure from within. We have not tried it because it is very, very fearful, loathsome; because when you see your bones, blood, veins, you become afraid. So really, we have completely blocked our minds from seeing within. We see the body from without, as if someone else is looking at the body. It is just as if you go outside this room and look at it -- then you know the outer walls. Come in and look at the house -- then you can look at the inner walls. You see your body from outside as if you are somebody else seeing your body. You have not seen your body from inside. We are capable of it, but because of this fear it has become a strange thing.

Indian yoga books say many things about the body which have been found to be exactly right by new scientific research, and science is unable to explain this. How could they know? Surgery and knowledge of the inside of the human body are very recent developments. How could they know of all the nerves, of all the centers, of all the inner structures? They knew even about the latest findings; they have talked about them, they have worked upon them. Yoga has always been aware about all the basic, significant things in the body. But they were not dissecting bodies, so how could they know?

Really, there is another way of looking at your own body -- from within. If you can concentrate within, suddenly you begin to see your body -- the inner lining of the body. This is good for those who are deeply body-oriented. If you feel yourself a materialist, if you feel yourself to be nothing but body, this technique will be very helpful for you. If you feel yourself to be a body, if you are a believer in Charvak or in Marx, if you believe that man is nothing but a body, this technique will be very helpful for you. Then go and see the bone structure of man.

In the old tantra and yoga schools they used many bones. Even now a tantric will always be found with some bones, with a man's skull. Really, that is to help concentration from inside. First he concentrates on that skull, then he closes his eyes and tries to visualize his own skull. He goes on trying to see the outer skull inside, and by and by he begins to feel his own skull. His consciousness begins to be focused. That outer skull, the concentration on it and the visualization, are just helps. Once you are focused inside, you can move from your toes to your head. You can move inside -- and it is a great universe. Your small body is a great universe.

This sutra uses the spinal column because within the spinal column there is the thread of life. This is why there is so much insistence on a straight backbone, because if the backbone is not straight you will not be capable of seeing the inner thread. It is very delicate, it is very subtle -- it is minute. It is an energy flow. So if the spinal column is straight, absolutely straight, only then can you have glimpses of that thread.

But our spinal columns are not straight. Hindus have tried to make everyone's spinal column straight from the very childhood. Their ways of sitting, their ways of sleeping, their ways of walking were all based, basically, on a straight spinal column. If the spinal column is not straight, then it is very difficult to see the inner core. It is delicate -- and really, it is not material. It is immaterial; it is a force. When the spinal column is absolutely straight, that thread-like force is seen easily.

... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Once you can feel, concentrate and realize this thread, you will be filled with a new light. The light will be coming from your spinal column. It will spread all over your body; it may even go beyond your body. When it goes beyond, auras are seen.

Everyone has an aura, but ordinarily your auras are nothing but shadows with no light in them -- just dark shadows around you. And those auras reflect your every mood. When you are angry, then your auras become as if blood-filled; they become filled with a red, angry expression. When you are sad, dim, down, then your auras are filled with dark threads, as if you are just near death -- everything dead, heavy.

When this spinal column thread is realized, your auras become enlightened. So a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ are not painted with auras just as decorations, those auras exist. Your spinal column begins to throw out light. Within, you become enlightened -- your whole body becomes a body of light -- then it penetrates the outer. So really, for a buddha, for anyone who is enlightened, there is no need to ask anyone what he is. The aura shows everything. And when someone becomes enlightened the master knows it, because the aura reveals everything.

I will tell you one story... Hui Neng, a Chinese master, was working under his master. When Hui Neng went to his master, the master said, "For what have you come here? There is no need to come to me." He couldn't understand. Hui Neng thought that he was not yet ready to be accepted, but the master was seeing something else. He was seeing his growing aura. He was saying this: "Even if you do not come to me, the thing is bound to happen sooner or later, anywhere. You are already in it, so there is no need to come to me."

But Hui Neng said, "Do not reject me." So the master accepted him and told him to go just behind the monastery, in the kitchen of the monastery. It was a big monastery of five hundred monks. The master said to Hui Neng, "Just go behind the monastery and help in the kitchen, and do not come again to me. Whenever it will be needed, I will come to you."
No meditation was given to Hui Neng, no scriptures to read, study or meditate upon. Nothing was taught to him, he was just thrown into the kitchen. The whole monastery was working. There were pundits, scholars, and there were meditators, and there were yogis, and the whole monastery was agog. Everyone was working and this Hui Neng was just cleaning rice and doing kitchen work.

Twelve years passed. Hui Neng didn't go again to the master because it was not allowed. He waited, he waited, he waited... he simply waited. He was just taken as a servant. Scholars would come, meditators would come, and no one would even pay any attention to him. And there were big scholars in the monastery.

Then the master declared that his death was near, and now he wanted to appoint someone to function in his place, so he said, "Those who think they are enlightened should compose a small poem of four lines. In those four lines you should put all that you have gained. And if I approve any poems and see that the lines show that enlightenment has happened, I will choose someone as my successor."

There was a great scholar in the monastery, and no one attempted the poem because everyone knew that he was going to win. He was a great knower of scriptures, so he composed four lines. Those four lines were just like this... the meaning of it was like this: "Mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it. Clean the dust, and you are enlightened."

But even this great scholar was afraid because the master would know. He already knows who is enlightened and who is not. Though all he has written is beautiful, it is the very essence of all the scriptures -- mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it; remove the dust, and you are enlightened -- this was the whole gist of all the Vedas, but he knew that was all that it was. He had not known anything, so he was afraid.

He didn't go directly to the master, but in the night he went to the hut, to his master's hut, and wrote all the four lines on the wall without signing -- without any signature. In this way, if the master approved and said, "Okay, this is right," then he would say, "I have written them." If he said, "No! Who has written these lines?" then he would keep silent, he thought.

But the master approved. In the morning the master said, "Okay!" He laughed and said, "Okay! The man who has written this is an enlightened one." So the whole monastery began to talk about it. Everyone knew who had written it. They were discussing and appreciating, and the lines were beautiful -- really beautiful. Then some monks came to the kitchen. They were drinking tea and they were talking, and Hui Neng was there serving them. He heard what had happened. The moment he heard those four lines, he laughed. So someone asked, "Why are you laughing, you fool? You do not know anything; for twelve years you have been serving in the kitchen. Why are you laughing?"

No one had even heard him laugh before. He was just taken as an idiot who would not even talk. So he said, "I cannot write, and I am not an enlightened one either, but these lines are wrong. So if someone comes with me, I will compose four lines. If someone comes with me, he can write it on the wall. I cannot write; I do not know writing."
So someone followed him -- just as a joke. A crowd came there and Hui Neng said, "Write: There is no mind and there is no mirror, so where can the dust gather? One who knows this is enlightened."

But the master came out and he said, "You are wrong," to Hui Neng. Hui Neng touched his feet and returned back to his kitchen.
In the night when everyone was asleep, the master came to Hui Neng and said, "You are right, but I could not say so before those idiots -- and they are learned idiots. If I had said that you are appointed as my successor, they would have killed you. So escape from here! You are my successor, but do not tell it to anyone. And I knew this the day you came. Your aura was growing; that was why no meditation was given to you. There was no need. You were already in meditation. And these twelve years' silence -- not doing anything, not even meditation -- emptied you completely of your mind, and the aura has become full. You have become a full moon. But escape from here! Otherwise they will kill you.

"You have been here for twelve years, and the light has been constantly spreading from you, but no one observed it. And they have been coming to the kitchen, everyone has been coming to the kitchen every day -- thrice, four times. Everyone passes through here; that is why I posted you in the kitchen. But no one has recognized your aura. So you escape from here."
When the spinal column thread is touched, seen, realized, an aura begins to grow around you. ... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Be filled with that light and be transformed. This is also a centering -- a centering in the spinal column. If you are body-oriented, this technique will help you. If you are not body-oriented, it is very difficult, it will be very difficult to visualize from the inside. Then to look at your body from the inside will be difficult.

This sutra will be more helpful for women than for men. They are more body-oriented. They live more in the body; they feel more. They can visualize the body more. Women are more body-oriented than men, but for anyone who can feel the body, who feels the body, who can visualize, who can close his eyes and feel his body from within, this technique will be very helpful for him.

Then visualize your spinal column, and in the middle a silver cord running through it. First it may look like imagination, but by and by you will feel that imagination has disappeared and your mind has become focused on that spinal column. And then you will see your own spine. The moment you see the inner core, suddenly you will feel an explosion of the light within you.
Sometimes this can also happen without any effort. It happens sometimes. Again, in a deep sex act it sometimes happens. Tantra knows: in a deep sex act your whole energy becomes concentrated near the spine. Really, in a deep sex act the spine begins to discharge electricity. And sometimes, even, if you touch the spine you will get a shock. If the intercourse is very deep and very loving and long -- really, if the two lovers are just in a deep embrace, silent, non-moving, just being filled with each other, just remaining in a deep embrace -- it happens. It has happened many times that a dark room will suddenly become filled with light, and both bodies will be surrounded with a blue aura.

Many, many such cases have happened. Even in some of your experiences it may have happened, but you may not have noticed that in a dark room, in deep love, suddenly you feel a light around both of your bodies, and that light spreads and fills the whole room. Many times it has happened that suddenly things drop from the table in the room without any visible cause. And now psychologists say that in a deep sex act, electricity is discharged. That electricity can have many effects and impacts. Things may suddenly drop, move or be broken, and even photographs have been taken in which light is visible. But that light is always concentrated around the spinal column.

So sometimes, in a deep sex act also -- and tantra knows this well and has worked on it -- you may become aware, if you can look within to the thread running in the middle of the spinal column. And tantra has used the sex act for this realization, but then the sex act has to be totally different, the quality has to be different. It is not something to be gotten over with; it is not something to be done for a release; it is not something to be finished hurriedly; it is not a bodily act then. Then it is a deep spiritual communion. Really, through two bodies it is a deep meeting of two innernesses, of two subjectivities, penetrating each other.

So I will suggest to you to try this technique when in a deep sex act -- it will be easier. Just forget about sex. When in a deep embrace, remain inside. Forget the other person also, just go inside and visualize your spinal column. It will be easier, because then more energy is flowing near the spinal column, and the thread is more visible because you are silent, because your body is at rest. Love is the deepest relaxation, but we have made love also a great tension. We have made it an anxiety, a burden.

In the warmth of love, filled, relaxed, close your eyes. But men ordinarily do not close their eyes. Ordinarily, women do close their eyes. That is why I said that women are more body-oriented while men are not. In a deep embrace in the act of sex, women will close their eyes. Really, they cannot love with open eyes. With closed eyes, they feel the body more from within.

Close your eyes and feel your body. Relax. Concentrate on the spinal column. And this sutra says very simply, IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. And you will be transformed through it.

Enough for today.

11Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Empty Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 Chapter #10 周五 2月 03, 2012 10:38 am

泊客

泊客
將官
將官

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #10

Chapter title: Fulfillment through becoming centered
13 November 1972 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7211135
ShortTitle: VBT110
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 94 mins

Question 1

IS SELF-ACTUALIZATION A BASIC NEED?

There are many questions. The first: IS SELF-ACTUALIZATION A BASIC NEED OF MAN? First, try to understand what is meant by self-actualization. A. H. Maslow has used this term "self-actualization." Man is born as potentiality. He is not really actual -- just potential. Man is born as a possibility, not as an actuality. He may become something; he may attain actualization of his potentiality or he may not attain. The opportunity may be used or it may not be used. And nature is not forcing you to become actual. You are free. You can choose to become actual; you can choose not to do anything about it. Man is born as a seed. Thus, no man is born fulfilled -- just with the possibility of fulfillment.

If that is the case -- and that is the case -- then self-actualization becomes a basic need. Because unless you are fulfilled, unless you become what you can be or what you are meant to be, unless your destiny is fulfilled, unless you actually attain, unless your seed becomes a fulfilled tree, you will feel that you are missing something. And everyone is feeling, that he is missing something. That feeling of missing is really because of this, that you are not yet actual.
It is not really that you are missing riches or position, prestige or power. Even if you get whatsoever you demand -- riches, power, prestige, anything -- you will feel this constant sense of something missing within you, because this something missing is not related with anything outward. It is related with your inner growth. Unless you become fulfilled, unless you come to a realization, a flowering, unless you come to an inner satisfaction in which you feel, "Now this is what I was meant to be," this sense of something missing will be felt. And you cannot destroy this feeling of something missing by anything else.

So self-actualization means a person has become what he was to become. He was born as a seed and now he has flowered. He has come to the complete growth, an inner growth, to the inner end. The moment you feel that all your potentialities have become actual, you will feel the peak of life, of love, of existence itself.

Abraham Maslow, who has used this term "self-actualization," has also coined another term: "peak experience." When one attains to oneself, he reaches a peak -- a peak of bliss. Then there is no hankering after anything. He is totally content with himself. Now nothing is lacking; there is no desire, no demand, no movement. Whatsoever he is, he is totally content with himself. Self-actualization becomes a peak experience, and only a self-actualized person can attain peak experiences. Then whatsoever he touches, whatsoever he is doing or not doing -- even just existing -- is a peak experience for him; just to be is blissful. Then bliss is not concerned with anything outside, it is just a by-product of the inner growth.

A buddha is a self-actualized person. That is why we picture Buddha, Mahavir and others -- why we have made sculptures, pictures, depictions of them -- sitting on a fully blossomed lotus. That fully blossomed lotus is the peak of flowering inside. Inside they have flowered and have become fully blossomed. That inner flowering gives a radiance, a constant showering of bliss from them. All those who come even within their shadows, all those who come near them feel a silent milieu around them.

There is an interesting story about Mahavir. It is a myth, but myths are beautiful and they say much which cannot be said otherwise. It is reported that when Mahavir would move, all around him, in an area of about twenty-four miles, all the flowers would bloom. Even if it was not the season for the flowers, they would bloom. This is simply a poetic expression, but even if one was not self-actualized, if one were to come in contact with Mahavir his flowering would become infectious, and one would feel an inner flowering in oneself also. Even if it was not the right season for a person, even if he was not ready, he would reflect, he would feel an echo. If Mahavir was near someone, that person would feel an echo within himself, and he would have a glimpse of what he could be.

Self-actualization is the basic need. And when I say basic, I mean that if all your needs are fulfilled, all except self-realization, self-actualization, you will feel unfulfilled. In fact, if self-actualization happens and nothing else is fulfilled, still you will feel a deep, total fulfillment. That is why Buddha was a beggar, but yet an emperor.
Buddha came to Kashi when he became enlightened. The king of Kashi came to see him and he asked, "I do not see that you have anything, you are just a beggar, yet I feel myself a beggar in comparison to you. You do not have anything, but the way you walk, the way you look, the way you laugh makes it seem as if the whole world is your kingdom. And you have nothing visible -- nothing! So where is the secret of your power? You look like an emperor." Really, no emperor has ever looked like that -- as if the whole world belongs to him. "You are the king, but where is your power, the source?"

So Buddha said, "It is in me. My power, my source of power, whatsoever you feel around me is really within me. I do not have anything except myself, but it is enough. I am fulfilled; now I do not desire anything. I have become desireless."
Really, a self-actualized person will become desireless. Remember this. Ordinarily we say that if you become desireless, you will know yourself. The contrary is more true: if you know yourself, you will become desireless. And the emphasis of tantra is not on being desireless, but on becoming self-actualized. Then desirelessness follows.

Desire means you are not fulfilled within, you are missing something so you hanker after it. You go on, from one desire to another, in search of fulfillment. That search never ends because one desire creates another desire. Really, one desire creates ten desires. If you go in search of a desireless state of bliss through desires, you will never reach. But if you try something else -- methods of self-actualization, methods of realizing your inner potentiality, of making them actual -- then the more you will become actual the less and less desires will be felt, because really, they are felt only because you are empty inside. When you are not empty within, desiring ceases.

What to do about self-actualization? Two things have to be understood. One: self-actualization doesn't mean that if you become a great painter or a great musician or a great poet you will be self-actualized. Of course, a part of you will be actualized, and even that gives much contentment. If you have a potentiality of being a good musician, and if you fulfill it and you become a musician, a part of you will be fulfilled -- but not the total. The remaining humanity within you will remain unfulfilled. You will be lopsided. One part will have grown, and the remaining will have stayed just like a stone hanging around your neck.

Look at a poet. When he is in his poetic mood he looks like a buddha; he forgets himself completely. The ordinary man in the poetic mood is as if he is no more there. So when a poet is in his mood, he has a peak -- a partial peak. And sometimes poets have glimpses which are only possible with enlightened, buddha-like minds. A poet can speak like a buddha. For example, Khalil Gibran speaks like a buddha but he is not a buddha. He is a poet -- a great poet.

So if you see Khalil Gibran through his poetry, he looks like Buddha, Christ or Krishna. But if you go and meet the man Khalil Gibran, he is just ordinary. He talks about love so beautifully -- even a buddha may not talk so beautifully. But a buddha knows love with his total being. Khalil Gibran knows love in his poetic flight. When he is on his poetic flight, he has glimpses of love -- beautiful glimpses. He expresses them with rare insight. But if you go and see the real Khalil Gibran, the man, you will feel a disparity. The poet and the man are far apart. The poet seems to be something which happens to this man sometimes, but this man is not the poet.

That is why poets feel that when they are creating poetry someone else is creating; they are not creating. They feel as if they have become instruments of some other energy, some other force. They are no more. This feeling comes because, really, their totality is not actualized -- only a part of it is, a fragment.

You have not touched the sky. Only one of your fingers has touched the sky, and you remain rooted on the earth. Sometimes you jump, and for a moment you are not on the earth; you have deceived gravity. But the next moment you are on the earth again. When a poet is feeling fulfilled, he will have glimpses -- partial glimpses. When a musician is feeling fulfilled, he will have partial glimpses.

It is said of Beethoven that when he was on the stage he was a different man, altogether different. Goethe has said that when Beethoven was on stage directing his group, his orchestra, he looked like a god. It could not be said that he was an ordinary man. He was not a man at all; he was superhuman. The way he looked, the way he raised his hands, was all superhuman. But when he came back from the stage he was just an ordinary man. The man on the stage seemed to be possessed by something else, as if Beethoven was no more there and some other force had entered into him. Back down from the stage he was again Beethoven, the man.

Because of this, poets, musicians, great artists, creative people are more tense -- because they have two types of being. Ordinary man is not so tense because he always lives in one: he lives on the earth. But poets, musicians, great artists jump; they go beyond gravity. In certain moments they are not on this earth, they are not part of humanity. They become part of the buddha world -- the land of the buddhas. Then again they are back here. They have two points of existence; their personalities are split.

So every creative artist, every great artist is in a certain way insane. The tension is so much! The rift, the gap between these two types of existences is so great -- unbridgeably great. Sometimes he is just an ordinary man; sometimes he becomes buddha-like. Between these two points he is divided, but he has glimpses.

When I say self-actualization, I do not mean that you should become a great poet or you should become a great musician. I mean that you should become a total man. I do not say a great man because a great man is always partial. Greatness in anything is always partial. One moves and moves and moves in one direction, and in all other dimensions, all other directions, one remains the same -- one becomes lopsided.

When I say become a total man, I do not mean become a great man. I mean create a balance, be centered, be fulfilled as a man -- not as a musician, not as a poet, not as an artist, but fulfilled as a man. What does it mean to be fulfilled as a man? A great poet is a great poet because of great poetry. A great musician is great because of great music. A great man is a great man because of certain things he has done -- he may be a great hero. A great man in any direction is partial. Greatness is partial, fragmentary. That is why great men have to face more anguish than ordinary men.

What is a total man? What is meant by being a whole man, a total man? It means, firstly, be centered; do not exist without a center. This moment you are something, the next moment something else. People come to me and I generally ask them, "Where do you feel your center -- in the heart, in the mind, in the navel, where? In the sex center? Where? Where do you feel your center?"

Generally they say, "Sometimes I feel it in the head, sometimes in the heart, sometimes I do not feel it at all." So I tell them to close their eyes before me and feel it just now. In the majority of cases this happens: they say, "Just now, for a moment, I feel that I am centered in the head." But the next moment they are not there. They say, "I am in the heart." And the next moment the center has slipped, it is somewhere else, at the sex center or somewhere else.

Really, you are not centered; you are only momentarily centered. Each moment has its own center, so you go on shifting. When mind is functioning you feel that the head is the center. When you are in love, you feel it is the heart. When you are not doing anything particularly, you are confused -- you cannot find out where the center is, because you can find this out only when you are working, doing something. Then a particular part of the body becomes the center. But YOU are not centered. If you are not doing anything, you cannot find where your center of being is.

A total man is centered. Whatsoever he is doing, he remains in the center. If his mind is functioning, he is thinking, thinking goes on in the head but he remains centered in the navel. The center is never missed. He uses the head, but he never moves to the head. He uses the heart, but he never moves to the heart. All these things become instruments, and he remains centered.

Secondly, he is balanced. Of course, when one is centered one is balanced. His life is a deep balance. He is never one-sided, he is never at any extreme -- he remains in the middle. Buddha has called this the middle path. He remains always in the middle.

A man who is not centered will always move to the extreme. When he eats he will eat much, he will overeat, or he can fast, but right eating is impossible for him. Fasting is easy, overeating is okay. He can be in the world, committed, involved, or he can renounce the world -- but he can never be balanced. He can never remain in the middle, because if you are not centered you do not know what middle means.

A person who is centered is always in the middle in everything, never at any extreme. Buddha says his eating is right eating; it is neither overeating, nor fasting. His labor is right labor -- never too much, never too little. Whatsoever he is, he is always balanced.

First thing: a self-actualized person will be centered.

Second thing: he will be balanced.

Thirdly: if these two things happen -- centering, balance -- many things will follow. He will always be at ease. Whatsoever the situation, the at-easeness will not be lost. I say whatsoever the situation -- unconditionally, the at-easeness will not be lost, because one who is at the center is always at ease. Even if death comes, he will be at ease. He will receive death as one receives any other guest. If misery comes, he will receive it. Whatsoever happens, it cannot dislodge him from his center. That at-easeness is also a by-product of being centered.

For such a man, nothing is trivial, nothing is great; everything becomes sacred, beautiful, holy -- everything! Whatsoever he is doing, whatsoever, it is of ultimate concern -- as if of ultimate concern. Nothing is trivial. He will not say, "This is trivial, this is great." Really, nothing is great, nor is anything small and trivial. The touch of the man is significant. A self-actualized person, a balanced, centered person, changes everything. The very touch makes it great.

If you observe a buddha, you will see that he walks and he loves walking. If you go to Bodhgaya where Buddha attained enlightenment, to the bank of the Niranjana -- to the place where he was sitting under the Bodhi tree -- you will see that the place of his steps has been marked. He would meditate for one hour, then he would walk around. In Buddhist terminology this is called CHAKRAMAN. He would sit under the Bodhi tree, then he would walk. But he would walk with a serene attitude, as if in meditation.

Someone asked Buddha, "Why do you do this? Sometimes you sit with closed eyes and meditate, then you walk." Buddha said, "Sitting in order to be silent is easy, so I walk. But I carry the same silence within. I sit, but inside I am the same -- silent. I walk, but inside I am the same -- silent."

The inner quality is the same... When he meets an emperor and when he meets a beggar, a buddha is the same, he has the same inner quality. When meeting a beggar he is not different, when meeting an emperor he is not different; he is the same. The beggar is not a nobody and the emperor is not a somebody. And really, while meeting a buddha, emperors have felt like beggars and beggars have felt like emperors. The touch, the man, the quality remains the same.

When Buddha was alive, every day in the morning he would say to his disciples, "If you have to ask anything, ask." The day he was dying, that morning it was the same. He called his disciples and said, "Now if you want to ask anything, you can ask. And remember, that this is the last morning. Before this day ends, I will be no more." He was the same. That was his daily question in the morning. He was the same! The day was the last, but he was the same. Just as on any other day, he said, "Okay, if you have to ask anything, you can ask -- but this is the last day."

There was no change of tone, but the disciples began to weep. They forgot to ask anything. Buddha said, "Why are you weeping? If you would have wept on another day it would have been okay, but this is the last day. By the evening I will be no more, so do not waste time in weeping. Another day it would have been okay; you could have wasted time. Do not waste your time in weeping. Why are you weeping? Ask if you have anything to ask." He was the same in life and death.

So thirdly, the self-actualized man is at ease. Life and death are the same; bliss and misery are the same. Nothing disturbs him, nothing dislocates him from his home, from his centeredness. To such a man you cannot add anything. You cannot take anything out of him, you cannot add anything to him -- he is fulfilled. His every breath is a fulfilled breath, silent, blissful. He has attained. He has attained to existence, to being; he has flowered as a total man.

This is not a partial flowering. Buddha is not a great poet. Of course, whatsoever he says is poetry. He is not a poet at all, but even when he moves, walks, it is poetry. He is not a painter, but whenever he speaks, whatsoever he says becomes a painting. He is not a musician, but his whole being is music par excellence. The man as a totality has attained. So now, whatsoever he is doing or not doing... when he is sitting in silence, not doing anything, even in silence his presence works, creates; it becomes creative.

Tantra is concerned not with any partial growth, it is concerned with you as a total being. So three things are basic: you must be centered, rooted, and balanced; that is, always in the middle -- of course, without any effort. If there is effort you are not balanced. And you must be at ease -- at ease in the universe, at home in the existence, and then many things follow. This is a basic need, because unless this need is fulfilled you are a man only in name. You are a man as a possibility, you are not actually a man. You can be, you have the potentiality, but the potentiality has to be made actual.
The second question:

Question 2

KINDLY EXPLAIN CONTEMPLATION, CONCENTRATION AND MEDITATION.

`Contemplation' means directed thinking. We all think; that is not contemplation. That thinking is undirected, vague, leading nowhere. Really, our thinking is not contemplation, but what Freudians call association. One thought leads to another without any direction from you. The thought itself leads to another because of association.

You see a dog crossing the street. The moment you see the dog, your mind starts thinking about dogs. The dog has led you to this thought, and then the mind has many associations. When you were a child, you were afraid of a particular dog. That dog comes to the mind and then the childhood comes to the mind. Then dogs are forgotten; then just by association you begin to daydream about your childhood. Then the childhood goes on being connected with other things, and you move in circles.
Whenever you are at ease, try to go backwards from your thinking to where the thoughts came from. Go back, retrace the steps. Then you will see that another thought was there, and that led to this. And they are not logically connected, because how is a dog on the street connected with your childhood?

There is no logical connection -- only association in your mind. If I was crossing the street, the same dog would not lead me to my childhood, it would lead to something else. In a third person it would lead to still something else. Everyone has associated chains in the mind. With any one person some happening, some accident will lead to the chain. Then the mind begins to function like a computer. Then one thing leads to another, another leads to another, and you go on, and the whole day you are doing that.

Write down on a sheet of paper whatsoever comes to your mind, honestly. You will be just amazed what is happening in your mind. There is no relation between two thoughts, and you go on doing this type of thinking. You call this thinking? This is just association of one thought with another, and they lead themselves... you are led.

Thinking becomes contemplation when it moves not through association, but is directed. You are working on a particular problem -- then you bracket out all associations. You move on that problem only, you direct your mind. The mind will try to escape to any bypath, to any side route, to some association. You cut off all the side routes; on only one road you direct your mind.

A scientist working on a problem is in contemplation. A logician working on a problem, a mathematician working on a problem is in contemplation. A poet contemplates a flower. Then the whole world is bracketed out, and only that flower and the poet remains, and he moves with the flower. Many things from side routes will attract, but he does not allow his mind to move anywhere. Mind moves in one line, directed. This is contemplation.

Science is based on contemplation. Any logical thinking is contemplation: thought is directed, thinking guided. Ordinary thinking is absurd. Contemplation is logical, rational.

Then there is `concentration'. Concentration is staying at one point. It is not thinking; it is not contemplation. It is really being at one point, not allowing the mind to move at all. In ordinary thinking mind moves as a madman. In contemplation the madman is led, directed; he cannot escape anywhere. In concentration the mind is not allowed to move. In ordinary thinking, it is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed to move only somewhere; in concentration, it is not allowed to move, it is only allowed to be at one point. The whole energy, the whole movement stops, sticks to one point.

Yoga is concerned with concentration, ordinary mind with undirected thinking, the scientific mind with directed thinking. The yogic mind has its thinking focused, fixed at one point; no movement is allowed.

And then there is 'meditation'. In ordinary thinking, mind is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed only
in one direction, all other directions are cut off. In concentration, it is not allowed to move even in one direction; it is allowed only to concentrate on one point. And in meditation, mind is not allowed at all. Meditation is no-mind.
These are four stages: ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation.

Meditation means no-mind -- not even concentration is allowed. Mind itself is not allowed to be! That is why meditation cannot be grasped by mind. Up to concentration mind has a reach, an approach. Mind can understand concentration, but mind cannot understand meditation. Really, mind is not allowed at all. In concentration, mind is allowed to be at one point. In meditation, even that point is taken away. In ordinary thinking, all directions are open. In contemplation, only one direction is open. In concentration, only one point is open -- no direction. In meditation, even that point is not open: mind is not allowed to be.

Ordinary thinking is the ordinary state of mind, and meditation is the highest possibility. The lowest one is ordinary thinking, association, and the highest, the peak, is meditation -- no-mind.

And with the second question, it is also asked: CONTEMPLATION AND CONCENTRATION ARE MENTAL PROCESSES. HOW CAN MENTAL PROCESSES HELP IN ACHIEVING A STATE OF NO-MIND?

The question is significant. Mind asks, how can mind itself go beyond mind? How can any mental process help to achieve something which is not of the mind? It looks contradictory. How can your mind try, make an effort to create a state which is not of mind?

Try to understand. When mind is, what is there? A process of thinking. When there is no-mind, what is there? No process of thinking. If you go on decreasing your process of thinking, if you go on dissolving your thinking, by and by, slowly, you are reaching no-mind. Mind means thinking; no mind means non-thinking. And mind can help. Mind can help in committing suicide. You can commit suicide; you never ask how a man who is alive can help himself to be dead. You can help yourself to be dead -- everyone is trying to help. You can help yourself to be dead, and you are alive. Mind can help to be no-mind. How can mind help?

If the process of thinking becomes more and more dense, then you are proceeding from mind to more mind. If the process of thinking becomes less dense, is decreased, is slowed down, you are helping yourself toward no-mind. It depends on you. And mind can be a help, because really, mind is what you are doing with your consciousness this very moment. If you leave your consciousness alone, without doing anything with it, it becomes meditation.

So there are two possibilities: either slowly, gradually you decrease your mind, by and by. If one percent is decreased, then you have ninety-nine percent mind and one percent no-mind within you. It is as if you have removed some furniture from your room -- then some space is created there. Then you remove more furniture, and more space is created there. When you have removed all the furniture, the whole room becomes space.

Really, space is not created by removing the furniture, the space was already there. It is only that the space was occupied by the furniture. When you remove the furniture, no space comes in from outside; the space was there, occupied by furniture. You have removed the furniture, and the space is recovered, reclaimed. Deep down mind is space occupied, filled by thoughts. If you remove some thoughts, space is created -- or discovered, or reclaimed. If you go on removing your thoughts, by and by you go on regaining your space. This space is meditation.

Slowly it can be done -- suddenly also. There is no need to go on for lives together removing the furniture, because there are problems. When you start to remove the furniture, one percent space is created and ninety-nine percent space is occupied. That ninety-nine percent occupied space will not feel good about the unoccupied space; it will try to fill it. So one goes on slowly decreasing thoughts and then again creating new thoughts.

In the morning you sit for meditation for some time; you slow down your process of thought. Then you go to the market, and again there is a rush of thoughts. The space is filled again. The next day you again do this, and you go on doing this -- throwing it out, and inviting it in again.

You can also throw all the furniture out suddenly. It is your decision. It is difficult because you have become accustomed to the furniture. You may feel uncomfortable without the furniture; you will not know what to do with that space. You may become afraid even to move in that space. You have never moved in such freedom.

Mind is a conditioning. We have become accustomed to thoughts. Have you ever observed -- or if you have not observed, then observe -- that you go on repeating the same thoughts every day. You are like a gramophone record, and then too not a fresh, new one -- old. You go on and on repeating the same things. Why? What is the use of it? Only one use, it is just a long habit; you feel you are doing something.

You are lying on your bed just waiting for sleep to come and the same things are repeated every day. Why are you doing this? It helps in a way. Old habits, conditionings, help. A child needs a toy. If the toy is given to him, he will fall into sleep; then you can take away the toy. But if the toy is not there, the child cannot fall into sleep. It is a conditioning. The moment the toy is given to him, it triggers something in his mind. Now he is ready to fall into sleep.

The same is happening with you. The toys may differ. One person cannot fall into sleep unless he starts chanting, "Ram, Ram, Ram..." He cannot fall into sleep! This is a toy. If he chants, "Ram, Ram, Ram..." the toy is given to him; he can fall into sleep.

You feel difficulty in falling asleep in a new room. If you are accustomed to sleeping in particular clothes, then you will need those particular clothes every day. Psychologists say that if you sleep in a nightgown and it is not given to you, you will feel difficulty in falling asleep. Why? If you have never slept naked and you are told to sleep naked, you will not feel at ease. Why? There is no relationship between nakedness and sleep, but for you there is a relationship, an old habit. With old habits one feels at ease, comfortable.

Thinking patterns are also just habits. You feel comfortable -- the same thoughts every day, the same routine. You feel everything is okay.

You have investments in your thoughts -- that is the problem. Your furniture is not just rubbish to be thrown; you have invested many, many things in it. All the furniture can be thrown immediately: it can be done! There are sudden methods of which we will speak. Immediately, this very moment, you can be freed of your whole mental furniture. But then you will be suddenly vacant, empty, and you will not know who you are. Now you will not know what to do because for the first time your old patterns are no more. The shock may be too sudden. You may even die, or you may go mad.

That is why sudden methods are not used. Unless one is ready, sudden methods are not used. One may go suddenly mad because one may miss all the moorings. The past drops immediately, and when past drops immediately you cannot conceive of the future, because the future was always conceived of in terms of the past.

Only the present remains, and you have never been in the present. Either you were in the past or in the future. So when you are just in the present for the first time, you will feel you have gone berserk, mad. That is why sudden methods are not used unless you are working in a school, unless you are working with a master in a group, unless you are totally devoted, unless you have dedicated your whole life for meditation.

So gradual methods are good. They take a long time, but by and by you become accustomed to space. You begin to feel the space and the beauty of it, and the bliss of it, and then your furniture is removed by and by.

So from ordinary thinking it is good to become contemplative -- that is the gradual method. From contemplation it is good to move to concentration -- that is the gradual method. And from concentration it is good to take a jump into meditation. Then you are moving slowly, feeling the ground at every step. And when you are really rooted in one step, only then do you begin to go for the next one. It is not a jump, it is a gradual growth. So these four things -- ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation -- are four steps.
The third question:

Question 3

IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NAVEL CENTER EXCLUSIVELY FREE AND SEPARATE FROM THE GROWTH OF THE HEART AND HEAD CENTERS, OR DOES THE NAVEL CENTER DEVELOP SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THE GROWTH OF THE HEART AND THE HEAD? AND ALSO, PLEASE EXPLAIN IN WHICH WAY THE TRAINING AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE NAVEL CENTER WILL DIFFER FROM THE TRAINING AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEART AND HEAD CENTERS.

One basic thing to be understood: the heart and head centers are to be developed, not the navel center. The navel center is just to be discovered; it is not to be developed. The navel center is already there. You have to uncover, or discover it. It is there fully developed, you are not to develop it. The heart center and the head center are developments. They are not there to be discovered, they have to be developed. Society, culture, education, conditioning help to develop them.

But you are born with a navel center. Without the navel center you cannot be. You can be without the heart center, you can be without the head center. They are not necessities; it is good to have them, but you can be without them. It will be very inconvenient, but you can be without them. However, without the navel center you cannot be. It is not just a necessity, it is your life.

So there are techniques for how to develop the heart center -- how to grow in love, how to grow in sensitivity, how to become a more sensitive mind. There are methods and techniques for how to become more rational, more logical. Reason can be developed, emotion can be developed, but existence cannot be developed. It is already there; it has to be discovered.

Many things are implied in this. One: it may not be possible for you to have a mind, a reasoning faculty, like Einstein. But you can become a buddha. Einstein is a mind center functioning at its perfection. Or someone else... a lover. A Majnu is functioning at his heart center in its perfection. You may not be able to become a Majnu, but you can become a buddha because buddhahood is not to be developed in you: it is already there. It is concerned with the basic center, the original center -- the navel. It is already there. You are already a buddha, only unaware.

You are not already an Einstein. You will have to try, and then too there is no guarantee that you will become one. There is no guarantee because really, it seems impossible. Why does it seem impossible? Because to develop the head of Einstein needs the same growth, the same milieu, the same training as was given to him. It cannot be repeated because it is unrepeatable. First you will have to find the same parents, because the training begins in the womb. It is difficult to find the same parents -- impossible. How can you find the same parents, the same date of birth, the same home, the same associates, the same friends? You will have to repeat the life of Einstein exactly -- ditto! If even one point is missing, you will be a different man.

So that is impossible. Any individual is born only once in this world because the same situation cannot be repeated. The same situation is such a big phenomenon. It means there must be the same world in the same moment! It is not possible -- it is impossible. And you are already here, so whatsoever you do, your past will be in it. You cannot become an Einstein. Individuality cannot be repeated.

Buddha is not an individual, Buddha is a phenomenon. No individual factors are meaningful; just your being is enough to be a buddha. The center is already there, functioning; you have to discover it. So the techniques for the heart are techniques for developing something, and the techniques concerning the navel center are concerned with uncovering. You have to uncover. You are already a buddha, you only have to know the fact.

So there are two types of persons -- buddhas who know that they are buddhas, and buddhas who do not know that they are buddhas. But all are buddhas. As far as existence is concerned, everyone is the same. Only in existence is there communism; in everything else communism is absurd. No one is equal, inequality is basic in everything else. So it may look like a paradox if I say that only religion leads to communism, but I mean THIS communism: this deep equality of existence, of being. In this you are equal to Buddha, to Christ, to Krishna, but in no other way are two individuals equal. Inequality is basic as far as outer life is concerned; equality is basic as far as inner life is concerned.

So these one hundred and twelve methods are not really for developing the navel center; they are for uncovering it. That is why instantly sometimes one becomes a buddha, because there is no question of creating something. If you can look at yourself, if you can go deep down into yourself, all that you need is already there. It is already the case, so the only question is how to be thrown to that point where you are already a buddha. Meditation doesn't help you to be a buddha, it only helps you to become aware of your buddhahood.
One question more:

Question 4

ARE ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES NAVEL CENTERED? FOR EXAMPLE, IS KRISHNAMURTI HEAD OR NAVEL CENTERED? WAS RAMAKRISHNA HEART OR NAVEL CENTERED?

Every enlightened one is navel centered, but the expression of each enlightened one may flow through other centers. Understand the distinction clearly. Every enlightened one is navel centered; there is no other possibility. But the expression is a different thing.

Ramakrishna expresses himself from the heart. He uses his heart as the vehicle of his message. Whatsoever he has found at the navel he expresses through his heart. He sings, he dances -- that is his way of expressing his bliss. The bliss is found at the navel, nowhere else. He is centered at the navel, but how to say to others that he is centered at the navel? He uses his heart for the expression.

Krishnamurti uses his head for that expression; that is why their expressions are contradictory. If you believe in Ramakrishna you cannot believe in Krishnamurti. If you believe in Krishnamurti you cannot believe in Ramakrishna, because belief is always centered in the expression, not in the experience. Ramakrishna looks childish to a man who thinks with reason: "What is this nonsense -- dancing, singing? What is he doing? Buddha never danced, and this Ramakrishna is dancing. He looks childish."

To reason the heart always looks childish, but to the heart reason looks useless, superficial. Whatsoever Krishnamurti says is the same. The experience is the same as it was for Ramakrishna or Chaitanya or Meera. But if the person is head centered, his explanation, expression is rational. If Ramakrishna sees Krishnamurti he will say, "Come on, let us dance. Why waste your time? Through dance it can be expressed more easily, and it goes deeper." Krishnamurti will say, "Dance? One gets hypnotized through dance. Do not dance. Analyze! Reason! Reason it out, analyze, be aware."

These are different centers being used for expression, but the experience is the same. One can paint the experience -- Zen masters have painted their experience. When they became enlightened, they would paint it. They would not say anything, they would just paint it. The RISHIS, sages, of the Upanishads have created beautiful poetry. When they became enlightened they would create poetry. Chaitanya used to dance; Ramakrishna used to sing. Buddha and Mahavir used the head, reason, to explain, to say whatsoever they had experienced. They created great systems of thought to express their experience.

But the experience is neither rational nor emotional: it is beyond both. There have been few persons, very few, who could express through both the centers. You can find many Krishnamurtis, you can find many Ramakrishnas, but only sometimes does it happen that a person can express through both the centers. Then the person becomes confusing. Then you are never at ease with that man because you cannot conceive of any relationship between the two; they appear contradictory.

If I say something, when I say it I must say it through reason. So I attract many people who are rationalistic, head-oriented. Then one day they see that I allow singing and dancing and they become uncomfortable: "What is this? There is no relationship..." But to me there is no contradiction. Dancing is also a way of speaking -- and sometimes a deeper way. Reason is also a way of speaking -- and sometimes a very clear way. So both are ways of expression.

If you see Buddha dancing, you will be in difficulty. If you see Mahavir playing on a flute, standing naked, then you will not be able to sleep. What happened to Mahavir? Has he gone mad? With Krishna the flute is okay, but with Mahavir it is absolutely unbelievable. A flute in the hand of Mahavir? Inconceivable! You cannot even imagine it. But the reason is not that there is any contradiction between Mahavir and Krishna, Buddha and Chaitanya; it is due to difference of expression. Buddha will attract a particular type of mind -- the head-oriented mind -- and Chaitanya and Ramakrishna will attract quite the opposite -- the heart-oriented mind.

But difficulties arise. A person like me creates difficulties: I attract both, and then no one is at ease. Whenever I am talking, then the head-oriented person is at ease, but whenever I allow the other type of expression the head-oriented one becomes uneasy. And the same happens to the other -- when some emotional method is used the heart-oriented one feels at ease, but when I discuss, when I reason out something, then he is absent, he is not here. He says, "This is not for me."

One lady came just a day before, and she said, "I was at Mount Abu, but then there was a difficulty. The first day when I heard you it was beautiful, it appealed to me; I was just thrilled. But then I saw KIRTAN -- devotional chanting and dancing -- so I decided to leave immediately; that was not for me. I went to the bus station, but then there was a problem. I wanted to hear you talk, so I came back. I didn't want to miss what you were saying." She must have been in difficulty. She said to me, "It was so contradictory."

It appeared so because these centers are contradictory, but this contradiction is in YOU. Your head is not at ease with your heart; they are in conflict. Because of your inner conflict, Ramakrishna and Krishnamurti appear to be in conflict. Create a bridge between your head and your heart, and then you will know that these are mediums.

Ramakrishna was absolutely uneducated -- no development of reason. He was pure heart. Only one center was developed, the heart. Krishnamurti is pure reason. He was in the hands of some of the most vigorous rationalists -- Annie Besant, Leadbeater and the Theosophists. They were the great system-makers of this century. Really, theosophy is one of the greatest systems ever created, absolutely rational. He was brought up by rationalists; he is pure reason. Even if he talks about heart and love, the very expression is rational.

Ramakrishna is different. Even if he talks about reason, he is absurd. Totapuri came to him, and Ramakrishna began to learn VEDANTA from him. So Totapuri said, "Leave all this devotional nonsense. Leave this Kali, the mother, absolutely. Unless you leave all this I am not going to teach you, because VEDANTA is not devotion, it is knowledge." So Ramakrishna said, "Okay, but allow me one moment so that I can go and ask the mother if I may leave everything, this whole nonsense. Allow me one moment to ask the mother."

This is a heart-oriented man. Even to leave the mother he will have to ask her. "And," he said, "she is so loving, she will allow me, so you do not bother." Totapuri could not understand what he had said. Ramakrishna said, "She is so loving, she has never said no to me at any time. If I say, `Mother, I am to leave you because now I am learning VEDANTA and I cannot do this devotional nonsense, so allow me please,' she will allow. She will give me total freedom to drop it."

Create a bridge between your head and heart, and then you will see that all those who have ever become enlightened speak the same thing, only their languages may differ.

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